PART II

"Members of the African mass are often pictured in labour gangs rhythmically breaking the crust of a road or off-loading cargo at a dock, or as a domestic servants. Such representations reveal little beyond their cultivated good humour. Periodically the mass is represented in a riot when the façade of good humour is dropped, and the docker, the domestic and the road-maker combine and with crude implements of battle picked up from the rubble and dirt unleash what appears to be an unprovoked outburst of savage violence". Fatima Meer 14.

The Commission of Inquiry into the riots concluded that the outbreak was "unexpected" and "unforeseen". "To suggest that the authorities are to blame for failing to prevent the initial outbreak is to reproach them with not having powers of divination". "We are satisfied that the promptitude and discretion, considering the unexpectedness of the situation which developed and the forces at their disposal". Nothing has been placed before us to show police had, or should have had, reasonable grounds for believing that there was a likelihood of the Natives reverting to utter barbarism 15. Tracing the immediate causes of the riot the Commission recorded that "The spark which caused this tragic explosion was almost ludicrous in its insignificance.... A Native boy, 14 years of age, had words with an Indian shop assistant 16 years of age and slapped the tatter's face. The Indian youth lodged a complaint with his also an Indian, who came out of the Indian Market into Victoria Street and assaulted the boy. In the tussle the Native's head accidentally crashed through glass of a shop withdrawing it the boy received cuts ears, which caused the blood to flow this happened at a time when a mass and Indians had congregated in quest of conveyance to their homes. The Natives saw an adult Indian assaulting a Native child and they saw blood. That was enough. They went beserk and attacked every Indian within sight". The "spark' which precipitated "one of the most devastating outbreaks of mass violence in times of peace within a state subject to the Administration of peoples of western European origin" 16 took place on Thursday, January 13th, 1949, at 5 p.m. The riot quickly spread to the "locations" and it was only late that night that an uneasy or restored. Rioting began again at noon the following day and that night Durban experienced what became known as the "night of horror". District Commandant of Police described it as follows: "Houses were now being burnt by the Score, all in the vicinity of Booth Road. Almost all the Indians not evacuated from this area were either killed, burnt to death or left dying. While the men were clubbed to death, Indian women and young girls were raped by the infuriated Natives. This state of arson and looting continued throughout the night and when the military and naval reinforcements arrived many instances occurred where the forces had to resort to the use of firearms to protect life and property".

Riot continued through most of the weekend, although the arrival of reinforcements had contained the worst excesses by Sunday. Clashes between Indians and Africans continued for some time after that week-end and intermittent clashes were reported in other parts of Natal during and in the weeks after the riots. The official estimate of the destruction of life and property was:

Deaths: 142 (1 European, 50 Indians, 87 Africans
and 4 unidentified).

Injured: 1,087 (32 Europeans, 11 Coloureds, 541, Africans and 503 Indians).

Buildings destroyed: 1 Factory, 58 stores, 247 houses.

Buildings damaged: 2 factories, 652 stores, 1,285 houses.

The response of the mainstream of institutional political opinion to the riot was predictable - white politics saw it as further evidence of the need for segregation of the races ("I say that if we want justification for our policy of apartheid we find it in the causes of these riots" - Nationalist M.P. in Parliament), black politics saw it as evidence of the need for non-racial solidarity especially among the oppressed "nationalities in the struggle against white supremacy. However there were small oppositions among white liberals and communists, concern was focussed on the appalling living conditions of the urban African; among blacks there was muted but deeply felt criticism of the African National Congress (ANC) - Natal Indian Congress (NIC) policy of non-racial cooperation. This criticism came from two sources on the one hand there were the not so muted attacks from a small group of the Non-European Unity Movement ( NEUM) members on what they saw as a premature tactic of non-racial political action; on the other hand, there were the attacks of the Africanists in the Youth League.

A careful analysis of Hansard showed that the riots were quoted widely in parliament with regard to two pieces of legislation. In the 1949 session an amendment was introduced by the Minister of Transport to the Motor Carrier Transportation Act - the need for the amendment, said the Minister, arose out the riots, as the Africans were boycotting certain bus routes. In essence the amendment provided for the establishment of machinery for taking away the licences of people who already had them-in this case to enable the Durban City Council to withdraw licences from established Indians and allow Africans to operate their own buses. The Minister said that "the principle of the bill is that Natives should be able to serve their own people and it will give an outlet to the more advanced type of Native who is seeking occupations of this kind in the Native urban locations.... and great care will have to be taken to ensure that a Service which is started by Natives remains in the hands of the Natives who started it and that it does not pass over to somebody else for whom the Natives are merely working". (This was clearly a reference to the possibility of Indian capitalists using Africans as dummy directors) must be made here amendment as an attempt to suppress their class, not simply to allow in theory for the emergence of the embryonic colonized trading class, but also because of traditional hostility of the European trader to Indian competition 17.

Meer writes:

Within days the Durban City Council, which had up to then grossly neglected non-white 210 vehicles at its service and the state opened food depots to cater for 20,000 Africans. The officials in charge made 'there is a strong feeling that they will never use Indian buses again', that there is a firm and definite of Natives to patronise our depot and boycott Indian traders' 18. The second point to be made is that while an attempt was being made to shackle the Indian trading class, the emerging African trading African trader was being given only a toe-hold in commerce as he was still heavily circumscribed as a trader so long as he was, and still is, officially regarded as a "temporary sojourner" in the urban areas 19. Thus we find considerable disappointment among colonized traders with their modest gains out of government policy. This can best be demonstrated by quoting from a memo submitted in 1954 by the Zulu Hlanganini Association of Cato Manor to the Govenor General which reads; "... the above area to our knowledge (Cato Manor) is proclaimed Bantu Area. The trading facilities are the heritage of the Bantu people. To our surprise trading facilities are in the hands of the Indians...."

They go on at some length to complain of the continued existence of Indian traders in African locations. In the field of buses Africans had no success and by 1960 there were operated by Africans in the Durban area. The boycott with the help of government legislation, had destroyed the Indian monopoly but had not created a strong alternative African trading class. I will return to the broader implications of this discrepancy between government rhetoric and government practice in the final section.

The second piece of legislation the riots influenced was the Group Areas Act. The Minister of the Interior, introducing the Group Areas Bill in the 1950 session said "The dangers of residential juxtaposition between members of different races is not a newly discovered danger.... The Durban riots of last year constitute a case in point, and show the dangers of residential juxtaposition for the peace and quiet of the country. Consequently the solution of separate areas for different races, compulsorily enforced if necessary a novel solution...." 20. Indeed Durban played an important role in the whole question of racial zoning and Kuper has observed that "Of all major cities in the Union, Durban, through its City Council, has shown the greatest enthusiasm for compulsory segregation, and has contribute the planning of Group Areas legislation for the country as a whole"21. Of course the riots did not cause the Act to be passed, as compulsory segregation for Indians had been introduced in 1946 what is being argued is that the government felt that the riot gave it further ammunition and no riot had taken place the Act would nevertheless have been passed. In the words of the Minister, it was the cornerstone of apartheid. Fatima Meer saw the Act as a direct attack on the Indian trading little doubt that one of the prime purpose of the Group Areas Act is to eliminate, or at least reduce to a -minimum, Indian commerce, and it is succeeding in doing so... Whole communities of traders have been uprooted, not only from their homes but also from their businesses, without any compensation for loss of goodwill or depreciation in stock". 22

The United Party responded to the riot in an ambiguous way and two contradictory voices could Smuts, the Leader of the Opposition, tried to make political capital out of the riot by implying that it could not have happened under his government. Some United Party (U.P.) members responded with a call for more police and greater segregation. Sullivan, for example deplored the lack of segregation and appealed for more social segregation, economic segregation, a stricter enforcement of the Urban Areas Act through the Pass Laws, and the extension of the Immorality Act to liaisons between Africans and Indians 23. Others, such as Hopewell, condemned the Commissions Report for not making far-reaching recommendations to remove the source of economic discontent that he believed caused the riot; but few other party members seem to have shared his view. Besides this small section of the U. P., those who gave "considered evidence to the Commission dissented from the dominant white attitude to the riot - this category included men such as Brookes, Webb and Kirkwood representing the Institute of Race Relations, the Churches, the Indo-European Council and the Economics Department of the University of Natal. Webb summed up the evidence of these men in the following words: "They regarded the riots as a serious and tragic sign of social disease, and continued to analyse the situation, pointing to poverty, lack of homes and houses, inadequate transport, lack of opportunity for the satisfaction of ambition, as the underlying causes of serious social unrest. Some also pointed to the prevailing anti-Asiatic attitude of the European population as expressed in the speeches of Ministers and others as likely causes of the deep dissatisfactions felt by Natives being turned against Indians". However the bulk of white South Africans treated the riot with undisguised satisfaction; the "coolies" had been dramatically demonstrated. Of the press reports that I read, the following comment on the Commission's Report is a typical example of this attitude: "The second (cause of the riot) is that the Indians form an element from which there is really no place in South African society. They are animated with an attitude to life which in every individual a victim of their urge for large trading profits - to the as the Commission testifies, 70% of the INDIANS are exploited by the other 30%... An element which cannot be fitted into society must be taken out of it. Although the Report doesn't go into it, it is nevertheless very clear that future difficulties between the Natives and the Indians and also other sections of the population can only be solved by the repatriation of Indians". 24

Throughout the history of African nationalism in South Africa two contradictory trends have been contained within it - Carter has labelled the one South Africanism, as it upheld the goal of common citizenship, and the other Africanist, as it gives primary emphasis to efforts to stimulate a sense of African self-confidence and self-reliance. Kuper draws a similar distinction but uses the labels inclusive and Exclusive - nationalism 25. This contradiction within African nationalism has manifested itself in an ambivalence towards the Indian community - Indians community Indians could be seen either as part of the power structure or as potential allies. This ambivalence was reflected in the Indian response too, which was dualistic as Indians alternated between accommodation of whites and resistance with a period when the leadership of both the African and Indian Congress had officially agreed to look upon each other as potential allies and to resist together white supremacy. The inclusive nationalists responded to the riot with a sense of urgency as it demonstrated the vital need for black unity to resist government policy. The ANC President came down from Johannesburg that weekend and, with the leaders of Natal Indian Congress toured the areas of destruction and attempted to stop the violence - and on a number of risked their lives to protect 26. At the end of his short visit Xhuma, with the NIC, issued a short statement condemning the riots and calling for closer cooperation between the two communities. Now in one sense this was a perfectly consistent attitude for the ANC to take - it was consistent with the decision to cooperate with Indians that had formed the basis of the widely publicised Xuma-Naicker-Dadoo Pact of 1947.

It was also consistent with changes that had taken place within the Indian Congresses since 1945 whereby the younger members had increasingly come to realise that as the smallest of the oppressed nationalities they could not hope to attain rights by themselves and that their strength lay in co-operation with other oppressed groups, particularly Africans. But in another sense Xuma's approach proved most contentious, as can best illustrated by quoting from a Durban Correspondent who wrote a letter complaining about Xuma's attitude to the Bantu World. He wrote: "Xuma came to Durban and without consulting the Natal ANC, issued a statement on behalf of the ANC to co-operate with Indians after meeting in camera for a few hours". The correspondent felt that there should have been consultation as the Africans had real grievances. Today there is talk everywhere that the leaders are under the thumb of Indian politicians, who with money available, have called the tune and our leaders have danced to it". With regard to the first allegation it may well have been true that Xuma by-passed the Natal leadership of Champion, Msimang and Luthuli felt strongly against co-operation with Indians. However the differences may only have been over questions of timing as both Champion and Msimang agreed to sit on the Joint Committee that was set up three weeks later. These tensions and contradictions within the official policy were contained, at least on the public level. The ANC and NIC agreed to work together to prepare a brief to the Commission on the causes in the event they withdrew as they were not permitted to cross-examine witnesses. At a meeting three weeks after the riots a Joint Committee was set up and the following statement made: " ... this Meeting is convinced that fundamental and basic causes of the disturbances are traceable to the political, economic and social structure of this country, based on differential treatment of the various racial groups and the preaching in high places of racial hatred and intolerance. Any disturbances such as the recent riots are, therefore, the fruits and results of such a policy as well as the responsibility of those who create and maintain such an artificial framework". The meeting called for greater understanding and cooperation through their national organisations and "to stand together in their fight for national liberation". The Joint Committee was to consist of representatives of the Natal ANC and the NIC as well as national representatives. This meeting was an important milestone in laying the foundations of the Joint Planning Council of the ANC and SAIC which was set up in November 1951 to organise the 1951/1952 Passive Resistance Campaign. But the ambiguity within the ANC continued as Luthuli records: "At Bloemfontein we had endorsed the earlier decision to undertake the Defiance Campaign in conjunction with the Indian Congress movement.... But among Natal Africans there was a degree of anti-Indian feeling, and it was difficult for those who opposed campaign for other reasons to exploit this form of racialism. Malcontents represented the policy of co-operation (with Indians) as the invention of the new leaders in Durban". 27

Among the blacks there were two types of criticisms of the dominant ANC-NIC approach to non-racial co-operation, although it is difficult to distinguish clearly between them. Firstly there were those, best illustrated by a very small group in Durban of the Non-European Unity Movement (NEUM), who argued that inter-racial political action was premature and those who supported it were using the liberatory struggle only to bargain with the ruling class in their essential role of collaboration and deception of the people 28. Elements of this position were held by some ANC Youth League members although they were more concerned with the stunting effect such "premature action" would have on the development of a popular and self-confident nationalism. In a general sense Meer has made this point: "African nationalism and African leaders were prematurely pushed by non-African democrats into making a choice between the rational, liberal nationalism which had emerged in France, England and America in the eighteenth century and which had developed into international humanism and the parochial nationalism based on the idea that each group has its own permanently distinct historical tradition, which the world had combined to destroy as Fascism and Nazism with their implied racialism. The new-generation leaders were never given an opportunity to work out their groups as indeed the French, Americans, and English had done ... (instead) they thoroughly discredited African nationalism as Herrenvolkism. There was a premature insistence on interracial, interracial co-operation - a superficial - sharing of platforms and a disproportionate representation of non-African democrats on bodies which planned essentially African political action... at a stage when many real and large chasms existed between the life chances of Africans and those of the other 'races' to whom Africans were expected to extend equality in the future" 29. Secondly, there are those who opposed co-operation because the Indians were to them the stumbling block to their immediate advancement - this was essentially the aspiring African trading class. It is difficult to establish the part played by the African traders in the riot (I will return to this in the next section), but it is sufficient to note here that its members were quick to take advantage of the vacuum created by the flight of Indian traders from locations like Cato Manor. Champion was a prominent trader at the time and perhaps expresses their position when he says that they felt Indian traders were deliberately thwarting their attempts to establish themselves in business. At present my evidence is somewhat impressionistic and I am trying to locate more systematic evidence on African traders 30.

What is striking about the response of almost all sides of the political spectrum is the tendency to conduct the debate about riots in political and ideological terms in order to demonstrate a political point for or against segregation - the participants in the riot are treated as a disembodied abstract thing usually referred to as a mob who unforseen and unexpectedly went on "an insane outburst of savage violence' that weekend. In the next two sections I want to put the rioters under sociological scrutiny. My observations on the participants in the riots are still very tentative and incomplete as my research in the area is still at an early stage.

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