African nationalism and working-class & popular protests, 1910-1924

Solomon Plaajte was part of the deputation to London in 1914 to protest the land act, the pamphlet above was an advert for Plaatje's address to the New England P.S.A on 18 July 1915. © Wits.

General Louis Botha headed the first government of the new Union of South Africa, with General Jan Smuts as his deputy. Their South African National Party, later known as the South African Party (SAP), followed a generally pro-British, White-unity line. The creation of the Union of South Africa was quickly followed by the launch of two important political movements. One was the South African Native National Congress (later ANC) formed in 1912, and the other made up of more radical Boers who split away from the SAP under the leadership of General Barry Hertzog, forming the National Party (NP) in 1914.

The new Union had no place for Black people, despite their constituting over 75% of the population. The Act of Union denied them voting-rights in the Transvaal and Orange Free State areas, and in the Cape Province Blacks gained the vote only if they met a property-ownership qualification. Blacks saw the failure to grant the franchise to them, coming on the heels of British wartime propaganda promoting freedom from "Boer slavery", as a blatant betrayal.

What is African Nationalism?

Nationalism refers to an ideology, a form of culture, or a social movement that focuses on the nation. It emphasises the collective of a specific nation. As an ideology, nationalism holds that 'the people' in the doctrine of popular sovereignty is the nation.  Nationalism ultimately is based on supporting one’s own nation.  African nationalism is a political movement for the unification of Africa (Pan-Africanism) and for national self-determination... read more

In the first two decades of Union (1910-1930), the Governments of Louis Botha, Jan Smuts, and J. B. Hertzog promulgated a barrage of discriminatory laws and regulations that tightened state control over Black people. The most important law passed was the Natives’ Land Act of 1913. This law reserved 93% (revised to 87% in 1936) of the land in South Africa for whites; it prevented Africans—two-thirds of the population at the time—from freely buying land. The small African ‘reserves’ created by the Land Act was a forerunner of the apartheid-era ‘Bantustans’ or ‘homelands.’ Denying the majority of South Africa's inhabitants, the right to own land had major socio-economic and political repercussions.

The authorities evicted thousands of squatters from farms and forced them into increasingly overcrowded and impoverished reserves. Life in the rural reserves was harsh, with illnesses and malnutrition rife. For many Africans, especially young men and women, migration to wage-earning jobs in cities and mines became one of the only ways to pay colonial taxes and survive.  With the hardening of White racism and segregation, more and more Blacks, Coloureds and Indians began to identify themselves as 'Africans', an 'African Nationlism' began to emerge.

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