New Methods of Struggle

Having defined its tasks and formulated its programme, having turned from the role of passivity to that of active leadership, the Convention was in a position to carry its new policy to the masses. The reaction of the people was a measure of how well the Convention had given expression to their needs. Seven years of bitter hardship and deep disillusionment had convinced them that their leaders had led them into a political swamp. And now their sullen passivity gave way to a warm response to the new policy. With a perception sharpened by experience they recognised that the new policy answered their needs and aspirations. This didn't mean that they understood fully what the new road would involve. A great deal still remained to be done first in respect of educating the people to the full implications of their line of action. They had to learn the meaning of the new policy in terms of the day-to-day struggles. They had to be taught that their rejection of trusteeship and segregation meant the rejection of all the inferior segregatory bodies. Concretely it meant in practical politics the application of the policy of non-collaboration with the oppressor. The people had to be taught that they operated or assisted in the operation of the dummy councils, the N.R.C, the Advisory Boards, etc., they were in fact operating the machinery of their own oppression.

A great deal of educational work was carried out by the All African Convention.

The Rehabilitation Scheme

In 1945 the African people in the "Reserves "were presented with what was called the Rehabilitation Scheme. When Mr. D. L. Smit, then Secretary for Native Affairs, outlined the scheme for the first time before the Ciskeian General Council (Bunga) he spoke in terms of a scheme "wider in scope than anything conceived before . . . which aims at correcting mistakes of the past and ensuring a better life for the inhabitants in the future."

The All African Convention analysed the proposed scheme in detail. The Western Province Committee of the A.A.C. published a pamphlet: "The Rehabilitation Scheme, The New Fraud,"which placed the scheme against the background of the whole "Native Policy"of the rulers, with its system of laws for the regimentation of African labour. The people themselves did not find it difficult to realise that when the schemes had been put into full operation, many families would be rendered landless and driven out of the places of their birth. It became clear to them, too, that the scheme envisaged a radical reduction of their already sadly insufficient stock. They understood quite well that the root of their trouble was not at all overstocking, as the authorities claimed, but under stocking. The stark facts showed that the people were suffering from malnutrition and the multi­tude of diseases traceable directly to sheer undernourishment and the children were dying for lack of milk-all because of the shortage of stock. The few cattle themselves were dying for lack of grass. And the root of all this destitution of man and beast and of the soil itself was Land Hunger.

With this understanding of the proposed measures, and re­inforced by their new outlook, the majority of the people of the Transkei, where the scheme was first applied, opposed it. The organisation of the people there linked up their opposition to the scheme with the general struggle against oppression. They saw in these schemes a new Nongqause which would render vast numbers of the people a prey to the vultures of labour, without land, without cattle, without rights of any kind. The acceptance of the scheme by the Bunga of chiefs more than anything else opened the eyes of the people to the function of such institutions.

By this time the leading organisations in the Transkei were members of the A.A.C. They took the opportunity of explaining to the people that segregatory institutions like the Bunga should be rejected, not only because they had accepted this particular scheme, but because they are foreign to a democratic system of government. They were part of the system of trusteeship and in this sense were instruments of oppression. The proposed "village settlements "were likened by the people to the locations system in the towns and the mine compounds, about which they knew so well. The restrictions to be imposed in these settlements reeked so much of the regimentation familiar to them. in the town institutions, that it helped them to link the plans of the "Rehabilitation Scheme"with the general system of oppression as expressed in the so-called "Native Policy"of the country.

The resentment of the people mounted as the Rehabilitation was more and more applied. Even some of the villages which had previously been persuaded to accept, on seeing how the scheme was being applied and the way it was affecting them, now became discontented. All over the Reserves the people resisted with a stubbornness which was new and all the more significant coming from the section of the population which was traditionally regarded as the most backward. As one delegate put it to the Non-European Unity Conference in 1938 in his report on events in the Ciskei : "To the cry of the people for more land, the Government can only answer with the so-called Rehabilitation Scheme, which confiscates their homesteads and reduces their cattle . . . The people are in desperate need of land and cattle. The people are kicking against this Rehabilitation Scheme. But in the fight they find their own headmen and chiefs and the Bungas ranged against them, as well as the Government officials. In their despair they resorted to violence against the officials who carried out the Government order, falling to understand the real forces against them. At King Williamstown three policemen were killed and as a result twelve men were condemned to death. "

Side by side with this blind hitting out at individual officials, this anarchist impulse which could only rebound back on themselves and cause still greater suffering, there was evidence of a proper assessment of the situation. They showed a considered judgment as to their position and the course they should follow. They realised that resistance could not be carried out effectively within the framework of the Government-created institutions. As the delegate in the same report went to say: "The people have voluntarily formed Location Committees against their head­men and Bungas to assert their right to decide how they should own their land. "(Minutes, N.E.U.M. 1948).

In the Transkei the AmaXesibe(Mt. Ayliff) threatened to take up arms in defence of their stock i.e. against the "limitation of stock". The majority of the people, too, repudiated their chief, who had accepted the Scheme. They held meetings in the hills under their newly-formed organisation, the Kongo. Then the following year a member of the Convention was arrested and charged with inciting the people against the Rehabilitation Scheme. In the district of Idutywa the people cut down the fences that were erected in conformity with the Government Scheme and a number of arrests were made.

In Pondoland the people were strong in protest against their chief, while the surrounding villages totally rejected the scheme. In the district of Peddle they threatened arms in protest against the branding of their cattle by government officials. At Sheshegu they renounced even the use of the dipping tanks, preferring to build their own and running them themselves, free of government interference. In the Middledrift and Debenek districts a number of villages repudiated the claim that they had accepted the Scheme and strenuously resisted its imposition. They accused the headmen of going- behind their backs. A number of arrests were made here also. In some villages the people formed their own "people's committees "and collected money for the defence of the arrested men. In the Bessiehoek Reserve in the district of Harrismith, O.F.S., the people opposed the culling of cattle under the Scheme. All over the country resistance goes stubbornly on. It is a grim fight whose story has still to be told.

The Transkei Organised Bodies (T.O.B.) took up the struggle on behalf of the people on the whole Transkei front and laid down the principles to be followed in the struggle, principles which were in conformity with the policy and the decisions of the A.A.C. They pointed out that the rejection of the new government schemes had to be seen as part of the struggle for the solution of the whole Land Problem and the Solution of this Land Problem itself could not be separated from the root problem of the franchise. Land hunger is the effect-one of the results-­of the lack of political rights and cannot be solved without first achieving political rights.

The Boycott

The determined rejection of the Rehabilitation Scheme was only one manifestation of the new outlook of the people. It led also to the rejection of all those institutions which were part of the machinery of segregation. They turned their attention to rendering these institutions ineffectual. And for this they em­ployed the weapon of the Boycott. The main point of attack was the Native Representative Council, the newest and most exposed of these institutions. In its Statement, "The New Road", the A.A.C. had called upon the Members of the N.R.C. to resign immediately and en bloc. The Transvaal Organised Bodies took this up and carried it to the people. The struggle went on in earnest. In 1946 the Transkei Voters' Association (which is part of the Cape African Voters' Association) twice met and twice repudiated the sham representation under the 1936 Native Repre­sentation Act. In September, 1946, the T.O.B. held a Conference at which they expressed themselves strongly against segregation and called upon the so-called "Native Representatives"and the M.R.C.'s to resign. Then in December, 1946, the Cape African Voters' Association in its Conference decided to boycott the elections under the Native Representation Act.

In January, 1947, the biggest and most representative gathering of Africans seen in the Transkei for many years was held in Umtata under the joint auspices of the T.O.B. and the Transkei Chiefs' and People's Association. It decided by an overwhelming majority that: "As a token of our dissatisfaction with the whole policy of segregation, and in order to facilitate the proposed boycott 'of the coming Parliamentary elections (under the Native Representation Act), the members of the N.R.C. should resign forthwith."It was at this Conference that a rift in the whole of the Transkei became clearly evident between the people on the one side and the chiefs, headmen, Bunga members and M.R.C.'s on the other. In May, 1947, in Umtata, at a meeting of the Transkei, it was decided to boycott the elections (under the N.R. Act).

The mounting tide of opposition was so great that even the African National Congress, which had stubbornly set its face against the boycott movement, was threatened with either being drawn willy-nilly into the stream or swept aside and driven into the limbo of the forgotten. Dr. Xuma, President of the A.N.C., assessing the situation, hastened to call an Emergency Conference in October, 1946. The immediate cause of this was the adjournment of the N.R.C., which was itself precipitated by the rising temper of the people and their determination to have done with this sham representation. At this Conference, dominated by the M.R.C.'s and their satellites, the African National Congress pretended to join the tide of the Boycott movement. We say "pretended"advisedly, as will be clearly demonstrated in the sequel.

In December, 1947, the All African Convention reiterated its policy of Non-collaboration and in particular called for the boycott of the elections under the 1936 N.R. Act. It passed the following resolution:

Boycott Resolution:

"Having fully considered the policy of trusteeship in all its aspects, how it is designed to keep the Non-European, especially the African people, in a position of permanent inferiority;and having had actual experience of the operation of this policy, the dire poverty, landlessness and ruthless exploitation of the Non-European;and in view of the fact that this policy is given expression to in the segregated government institutions, such as the Native Representative Council, Advisory Boards, Bungas, etc., which serve to persuade the people into believing that they are represented in the Government of the country, thus making them keep their eyes away from the only place where laws are made, namely, Parliament, this Conference therefore rejects the sham representation provided for in the 1936 Acts, and all forms of special and segregated institutions foreign to a democratic system of Government.

"This Conference, after full deliberation, has come to the conclusion that nothing less than full democratic rights, including direct representation in Parliament, can meet the aspirations of the people, and calls upon the African people

1. to refuse to operate the machinery for their own oppression.

2. to Boycott The Forthcoming Elections. "

Further, in dealing with an attempt on the part of the rulers to counter the tide of the boycott with what was known as the Smuts' Proposals, intended to woo the intellectuals including the sulky M.R.C.'s, and generally to "improve"this dummy council (the N.R.C.) by increasing the number of seats and giving the M.R.C.'s the right to levy more taxes on the shoulders of the people, the All African Convention resolved:

"Inasmuch as the 'new' Proposals of Smuts are an integral part of the old policy known as the Hertzog Native Policy, embodied in the Native Acts of 1936-37: the Native Representation Act, Natives Land and Trust Act and the Amendments to the Native Urban Areas Act of 1925;and in­asmuch as these 'new' Proposals do not deviate one whit from this policy, but entrench the existing oppressive policy by seeking to perfect the machinery of oppression;and inasmuch as the 'new' Proposals merely seek to enlarge the present dummy N.R.C. and enlist the services of the N.R.C.'s as tax-collectors, this Conference, after full consideration, has come to the conclusion that these proposals are designed to draw in more groups of the African people to help in the further intensification of their own oppression. This Conference, therefore, entirely rejects the Smuts Proposals and calls upon the people to refuse to be a party to their own oppression."

The firmness of the All African Convention and the clear and uncompromising stand it took up communicated itself back to the people. Everywhere the struggle went on between the people and the quislings. The by-election caused by the death of Mr. Hemming, Transkei Native Representative in Parliament, brought the struggle in the Transkei to a head. The various White candidates who offered their names for election found themselves up against a wall of opposition. For the first time African people in the Reserves went to meetings called by Euro­peans and spoke as man to man and told them outright that they were not prepared to listen to them, and that they could not have them addressing meetings in the Transkei against the decisions of the people.

On finding the Africans adamant in spite of all their cajoling the White candidates withdrew their names, leaving only one to enter, unopposed. In this way they deprived the Africans of the possibility of demonstrating their total rejection of the sham representation. Advocate Buchanan, who thus entered Parliament as a White "Native Representative "of the Transkei, immediately decided to go and address his constituency. But when he arrived at Umtata where his first meeting was to be held, the people refused to hear him, arguing that they didn't recognise him as their Parliamentary representative. Despite the pleadings of both himself and Adv. D. B. Molteno, who had accompanied him, the people maintained that Adv. Buchanan had been informed during the elections that the Voters' Associations embracing the whole of the Cape Province, and all the responsible major organisations of the people, had made it clear that they boycotted the elections and therefore could not recognise any so-called "Native Representative"in Parliament. In all the subsequent meetings in the Transkei he met with a similar fate. It has to be recorded, however, that in the same year, July, 1947, the same Adv. Buchanan went to the Conference of the Cape African National Congress where he was welcomed by its President, the Rev. Calata, who presented him to Conference with the following words: "I ask the Conference to allow me to extend a warm and hearty welcome to Adv. Buchanan, the new representative of the Transkei."Here spoke a voice out of the past, the epitome of reaction, and it was to persist and still bring disruption into African politics. But more of this later.

At the beginning of the following year the elections of the M.R.C.'s fell due. But the people held fast to their decision to boycott. In February, 1948, the Executives of the T.O.B. and the Transkei African Voters' Association held a joint meeting. The issue they had to decide upon was the "problem posed by the fact that candidates were seeking election in spite of the people's decision to boycott. They issued a joint manifesto denouncing the Candidates and calling for a boycott. On the 6th March, 1948, the T.O.B. and the Transkei Voters' Association held a joint meeting at which they passed the following resolution:

"The T.O.B. and the Transkei Voters' Association in joint resolution

(1) call upon all candidates in the current elections to withdraw in defer­ence to the people's will;

(2) repudiate the authority of the N.R.C. to speak on behalf of the people who have on several occasions declared that they do not wish to participate in any elections under the Native Representation Act;

(3) expel from the Transkei Voters' Association Messrs. Jeremiah Moshesh, C. K. Sakwe, Saul Mabude, E. Qamata, G. Dana, Thomas Poswayo and Theo. Ntintili, who by seeking election to the N.R.C. flouted the decision of every meeting held in the Transkei on the boycott question.

(4) urge Africans in other provinces and the electoral area of the Cape proper to intensify the campaign to implement the boycott decision."(Inkundla, 24.3.48).

These are clear and unambiguous directives which mark a maturity engendered in the heat of the struggle. They strike a note of uncompromising firmness. Here is nothing shallow, no mere words for words sake or act of braggadocio. They reflect a spirit that has permeated every section of the people throughout the Transkei. They are the expression of a will which at last has found words to formulate its demands, a will to live as men and women without apology or supplication. They are the expression of a spirit surging up from the depths of long experience.

In December of the same year the President of the All African Convention, Professor Jabavu, made a ruling that no member of the N.R.C. could be a member of Convention. The following year the Cape African Voters' Association expelled its ex-Secretary, Mr. Sigila, for having stood for elections for the N.R.C.

The Teachers

It is a significant fact that the struggle at this stage is under the leadership of the vocal section which is capable of formulating the principles necessary to guide any movement and protect it from the shoals of opportunism. The teachers, who constitute the greatest single unit of the vocal section among the African people, had up to now either been lukewarm or had been too timid to join in the struggle as a body. Some of them, it is true, had participated as Voters or members of other organisations of the people. The attitude of the majority of them had been that of maintaining the professional sanctity of the Teachers' Organisation and preserving it from the taint of politics.

But so much had the new spirit permeated the mass of the people in all walks of life that the teachers for the first time posed to themselves the question: What is the position of an African teacher in the given social set-up? And what is his function. The answer to these questions could no longer be delayed. The events crowding in on them were like a challenge compelling them to come to grips with these questions and define their own position. For three years, beginning from 1945, a battle was being waged within the Teachers' Organisation, the Cape African Teachers' Association (C.A.T.A.) representative of the whole of the Cape Province and the Transkei. It brought home to them the realisation of the fact that their organisation, though a few decades old, had no clear policy, because it had no clearly defined principles. Thus at the 1948 Conference of C.A.T.A. the teachers discussed and adopted a Statement of Policy which was a culmination of the long-drawn-out struggle within the organisation itself.

In its Preamble it stated:

"Our struggle is inseparable from the general struggle of the African people. Whether we like it or not we belong there. For decades the Teachers' Associations have treated the question of African education as if it were the exclusive concern of the African teachers' associations and the question of labourers' wages the exclusive concern of the labourers . . . Let us entertain no flattering opinion of ourselves. Let us put ourselves where we belong and see ourselves where we really are. "

The Statement went on to illuminate how the conditions governing the African teachers were bound up with and determined by those which governed other sections of the African population, so that the struggle for higher wages, for example, could not be divorced from the general struggle for raising the status of Africans in general. As the document stated:

"The salaries of African teachers are based upon the wages in other fields of employment open to Africans.... In order not to upset the labour policy of the country a constant ratio must be maintained between the wages of the Black labourer and the wages of the Black teacher ....

It is clear that our struggle is inextricably bound up with the struggle of the African labourer. Even our slogan:' 'Equal pay for equal work is an old trade union slogan. It implies the recognition of merit irrespective of colour. It implies the abolition of the Colour Bar. It implies the granting of full democratic rights. So any one who makes this demand is fighting for the principle of full democratic rights. But we have already established the fact that it is futile to strive to obtain equality between White teacher and Black teacher unless there is equality between White labourer and Black labourer. In short . . . to seek equality between White teacher and Black teacher is to seek full social, economic and political equality between White and Black in South Africa. Our slogan therefore implies that our struggle is the general political struggle for emancipation of the African. There can be no escape from that conclusion. "

Having thus stated their standpoint the teachers concluded that their organisation, the C.A.T.A., together with all the other organisations, "must come together and co-ordinate their struggles in the fight against their common oppression-the fun­damental oppression of the Black man."Fully aware of their position and their responsibility to the population as a whole and fully realising the political implications of the step they were taking, the Teachers at this Conference decided to affiliate their organisation (C.A.T.A.) to the All African Convention.

From this time on, everything they did, their approach to every question, stemmed from the claim to full equality, which was the very core of the standpoint taken by the A.A.C. in 1944 -a standpoint which the teachers had now accepted without reservation, as members of the federal body (A.A.C.). This acceptance was clearly evidenced in the Memorandum which the C.A.T.A. drew up in answer to the questionnaire presented by the Eiselen Commissionon "Native Education."A comparison between the C.A.T.A. memorandum and those issued by the teachers' organisations in the other Provinces, O.F.S., Transvaal and Natal, all of which are not affiliated to the All African Convention, reveals the world of difference between those organisations which have accepted the new outlook and the new policy of the 10-Point Programme, and those which have not, between those organisations which claim full equality and those which still accept inferiority.

The Conception of Equality

When in 1944 the All African Convention declared the policy of the rejection of trusteeship and asserted the claim to full equality, few realised the far-reaching effects it would have upon the people. First on their minds, on their outlook, and thence on their struggles. Although on paper it may seem a simple thing for a people to recognise themselves as equal to other human beings, yet if we visualise the generations of oppression, the sheer weight on mind and body of a system of slavery armed with all the machinery of the state, all the legal and ideological weapons designed to obliterate from their minds the very capacity to think of themselves as human beings;if we visualise the Steadily insidious effect of the conditions of their existence, the brutalising squalor and deprivation which of themselves engender the feeling of inferiority-if we take all these things into consideration we begin to understand the leap which the people took at this time. We begin to have some idea of the magnitude of this conception of equality.

It gave rise to confidence and self-reliance. It enabled them to throw off their dependence on the ideas of the enemy-class. It made it possible for them to assess the various groups in society, their policies and their class-interests, and the motivations of their actions. In this way they were now able to cut across the current ideas imposed on society by the ruling-class for its own interests and self-preservation. They could now strike out on an independent path. That is why they were able to choose their true allies in the struggle, those who had the same disabilities and therefore the same political aspirations as themselves. This liberation of the mind released the latent energies of the people. Shedding their inferiority, they were inspired with a new hope and a new determination.

This is what lies behind the militancy of their demands, as we have described them before. At the moment the struggle is still in its first tentative stages. Nevertheless the basis has been laid and the broad general lines have been established. It was no longer a question of palliatives, of "improving"this or that separate institution for the Black man. It was nothing short of full equality, political, social and economic. In their struggles, too, it was no longer a question of this or that tribe, this or that section, or even a question of colour. It was a question of the oppressed people as a whole, whatever their colour, language or creed. That is why the All African Convention, recognising the necessity to broaden the base of the struggle, helped to create the Non-European Unity Movement, and affiliated to it. The "New Road"of the A.A.C., which was adopted in 1944, laid the basis for the development of a true national movement, a movement that has come to stay in South African politics until it has fulfilled its mission.

Here we may emphasise that it is not an anti-White or racialist movement. In fact racialism is foreign to it and indeed wholly contradictory to its principles. Racialism is an enemy of Non-European unity. If at the moment the movement is called "The Non-European Unity Movement", this is dictated by the objective conditions existing in South Africa to-day, whereby the various Non-European groups are subjected to specific racial oppression over and above economic exploitation. The designation, Non-European unity' is used rather to call attention to the community of interests of the three groups and to emphasise the necessity to counter the propaganda of the rulers who in their own interests have always fostered artificial racial divisions. The elimination of racial antagonism amongst the oppressed peoples is the first step towards the abolition of racialism in general. But the Non-European Unity Movement is conscious of the fact that racial harmony can be accomplished on one basis only-that of full equality of all races and all peoples.