From the book: Freedom In Our Life Time by Anton Muziwakhe Lembede
Booker T. Washington's educational philosophy of self-help and vocational and technical training inspired a generation of black and white educators responsible for African education in South Africa. For details, see R. Hunt Davis, "The Black American Educational Component in African Responses to Colonialism in South Africa," Journal of Southern African Affairs 3 (i) 1968: 69-84 and "John L. Dube: A South African Exponent of Booker T. Washington," Journal of African Studies 1 (1975-76): 497-52.8; Manning Marable, "Booker T. Washington and African Nationalism," Phylon 35 (1974): 398-406; and Louis Harlan, "Booker T. Washington and the White Man's Burden," American Historical Review 71, 2. (1966): 441-67.
Lobola, or bride price, is an African custom in which a groom gives cattle to the parents of his prospective wife. See Adam Kuper, Wives for Cattle: Brideweahh and Marriage in Southern Africa (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1982).
Lembede's assertion was close to the mark. With their control over most publishing by Africans, Europeans could regulate and shape the orthography of African languages and what African writers were able to publish. See Jeffrey Peires's article on the Lovedale Press, "The Lovedale Press: Literature for the Bantu Revisited," History in Africa, 6 (1979): 155-175) and Brian WiUan's chapter "Language and Literature: Preserving a Culture" in Sol Plaatje: A Biography (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984).
Horace, Satires, Book i, Satire 9.
The Representation of Natives Act of 1936 established an advisory body, the Natives Representative Council (NRC), which convened for the first time in 1937. It was composed of 11. members: the chairman (Secretary for Native Affairs), five appointed white "native" commissioners, four appointed Africans, and twelve indirectly elected African representatives (3 from the urban areas, 9 from the rural areas). The body could deliberate and offer advice on legislation affecting Africans in the European Parliament and it could propose legislation on African matters. However, the council was hamstrung from the outset. As its ineffectiveness became clear, it attracted strong opposition from within the African community, especially Youth Leaguers, who viewed the council as a talk shop and a means to control African opposition. Finally, African representatives in the council boycotted it, and it was disbanded in 1951 as the National Party government began implementing its apartheid policies. See C. M. Tatz, Shadow and Substance in South Africacans: A Study in Land and Franchise Policies Affecting Africans, 1910-1960 (Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press, 1962).
The constitution of South Africa was ratified by the Act of Union, passed in the British Parliament in September 1909. The act paved the way for the creation of the Union of South Africa in May 1910.
The Natives Land Act of 1913 was a cornerstone of a segregated South Africa. The law froze the unequal land division between blacks and whites by stating that Africans could not buy European land and vice versa. It also undermined sharecropping arrangements that made it possible for some blacks to maintain a semi-independent base on the land by restricting the number of black heads of household who worked on European farms and stipulating that blacks could only rent white farm land with labor service. The Act set off a flurry of expulsions of black sharecroppers, especially in the Orange Free State, but it took a number of years before sharecropping was a spent institution. Solomon Plaatje's Native Life in South Africa {London; P. S. King and Son, 1916) remains a classic account of the impact of the law on Africans.
The Mines and Works Amendment Act of 1926 (or "Colour Bar" Act) provided for the government to restrict certain skilled occupations on the mines, such as operating machines, to Europeans and Coloureds.
Through the Native Urban Areas Act, the government sought to control African urbanization by setting up African locations separate from European residential areas, creating advisory boards to encourage a limited form of African participation in governing, and instituting controls on trading, beer brewing, and vagrancy. See T. R. Davenport, "African Townsmen? South African Natives (Urban Areas) Legislation Through the Years," African Affairs 68 (2 71) (1969): 95-109 and Paul Maylam, "The Rise and Decline of Urban Apartheid in South Africa," African Affairs 89 (354) (1990): 57-84.
The Native Administration Act (192.7) gave the government arbitrary powers over Africans throughout the country, including the right to appoint native administrators, chiefs, and headmen; to remove African "tribes" "from any place to any other place within the Union"; to legislate by proclamation for the African reserve areas; and to punish "any person who utters any words or does any other act or thing whatever with intent to promote any feeling or hostility between Natives and Europeans." This last provision was used repeatedly to prevent African politicians from organizing by banishing them from African areas.
A limited number of Coloureds and Africans who met educational, property or salary qualifications had the right to vote in elections in the Cape Province. In 1926,14,912- Africans, 1,085 Indians, and 21,223 Coloureds had the vote in the Cape out of a total electorate of a little over 200,000. A clause in the Union constitution stipulated that the Cape franchise could not be abolished unless a two thirds majority in Parliament approved it. Prime Minister Hertzog launched his campaign to get rid of the Cape franchise for Africans in 1926, but it took him another decade before he achieved his goal.
The Representation of Natives Act of 1936 provided for Africans in the Cape Province to elect three members {who had to be "British subjects of European descent") to the House of Assembly. The vote was restricted to any male who owned property worth £75 or earned a salary of at least £50 per year, who was at least 21 years old, who was able to sign his name, address, and occupation, and whose name had previously appeared on the voters' role.
The 1936 Natives Trust and Land Act provided for the government to transfer additional or "released" land to the reserve areas so long as it was adjacent land. When the Youth League Manifesto was written in 1944, the government was just beginning to buy up land to be added to the African reserves, which comprised roughly 7 percent of the land in 1936.
The Native Laws Amendment Act (1937) aimed at bringing urban policy in line with the 1913 Natives Land Act. The Act provided for biennial industrial censuses in municipalities. The government intended to control the influx of blacks into urban areas and to remove "surplus" blacks from the urban areas and generally prohibit Africans from owning land in the urban areas.
They are referring to the lobbying for a Youth League at the 1943 Bloemfontein conference of the African National Congress. The conference passed a resolution that stated: "henceforth it shall be competent for the African youth to organise and establish Provincial Conferences of the Youth League with a view of forming a National Congress of the Youth League immediately."
The Manifesto is probably referring to the formation of the African Democratic Party (ADP) in 1943, which siphoned some youth support away from the ANC. The ADP's creation, however, is cited as one reason why Dr. Xuma was sympathetic to the Youth League's formation ”” to shore up youth support for the ANC. For more details on the ADP, see note 36.
Aristotle, Politica.
Bethuel Mnguni's African Youth League was started up around the same time as the ANC Youth League. Although some contended Mnguni's group was a front for the Trotskyists, Mnguni claimed his group was independent. A presentation of the League's program is found in "African Youth League," Inkundla ya Bantu (28 February 1945, p.2). The League advocated scrapping the land laws and the reserve system, poll taxes, pass laws, urban areas legislation, and the color bar and introducing free compulsory education and a universal franchise.
C. S. Ramohanoe was provincial president of the Transvaal African National Congress from 1944 to 1950. After J. B. Marks defeated him for the provincial presidency in 1950, he joined a breakaway faction, the Nationalist Minded Bloc, and took over as leader after Selope Thema died in 1955.
Alexander Pope, "An Essay on Man."
James Shirley, "Gjntention of Ajax and Ulysses."
Founded in 1941 by merging a number of student associations, the Transvaal African Students' Association (T.A.S.A.) involved itself in a range of activities, including sports, music, theatricals; sponsoring debates, discussions, and lectures; and sending deputations to present evidence to government commissions. TA.S.A. briefly put out a publication, T.A.S.A. Bulletin. Among its members were a number of future Youth League activists.
Ironically, the campaign against pass laws had been launched in November 1943 by the Gammunist Party. In 1944, after the government moved to tighten up pass laws relaxed during the Second World War, Dr. Xuma had committed the ANC to the Anti-Pass campaign. A mass conference of 540 delegates representing 375 organizations launched the Anti-Pass Campaign, which centered on gathering one million signatures on a petition calling on the government to abolish pass laws. This goal proved difficult to achieve and the petition that was submitted to the government in June 1945 fell short of the goal. Even then, government ministers did not accept the petition. The campaign was sustained into 1946 when the ANC redirected its focus towards boycotting the Natives Representative Council. See also Lembede's comment in Document 33.
Born in the Pietersburg area, Richard Baloyi (c. 1897-1962) was a successful Alexandra real estate agent who played an active role in civic and political affairs. He served as treasurer-general of the ANC from 1938 to 1949 and was a member of the Natives Representative Council from 1937 to 1942. In the early 1950s he was associated with Selope Thema's Nationalist Minded Bloc, composed largely of former ANC leaders who were unhappy with the ANC's growing ties with Coloured and Indian political organizations.
Born in Pietersburg area, David W. Bopape (1915-) was educated at Botshabelo Training College, Middelburg. He was active in the Transvaal African Teachers' Association (TATA) and was secretary of the TATA campaign for higher salaries and better conditions of service that was highlighted by a mass protest march in downtown Johannesburg in 1944. For his participation in the teachers' campaign, he was dismissed as a teacher in Brakpan in 1944. Although his dismissal set off a community protest, he was not reinstated.
A Methodist minister based in Pimville, Rev. H. Mpitso was secretary organizer of the African Ministers' Association. He was a leading figure in the Mendi Memorial Fund set up to commemorate the contributions of African soldiers during the First World War and the sinking of the Mendi, a transport ship carrying Africans, in the English channel in 1917. An active member of the ANC, he served on the African Claims committee and on its National Executive.
In an attempt to salvage the Natives Representative Council, Prime Minister Smuts had met with six African members of the NRC on 8 May 1947 and proposed changing the Council by making it larger and directly elected and delegating it with some responsibility for governing the re-serves. By and large, African leaders opposed his proposals. For more details, see Gwendolen Carter and Thomas Karis, eds.. From Protest to Challenge: A Documentary History of African Politics in South Africa, 1882-1964 (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1973), Vol. II, 95-97.
At the 1946 ANC convention, with Xuma off on a trip to the United States, a resolution was passed instructing the ANC executive to organize a boycott of the festivities surrounding the tour of South Africa by King George V and the Royal Family. The boycott never got off the ground.
Edward Hickson, "Try and Try Again."
Bible 1 Corinthians 13:11.
Shaka (ca. 1787-1828) was king of the Zulu Kingdom. Sekhukhune (1814-1882.) was king of the Pedi nation. Moshoeshoe (ca. 1786-1870) was king of the Basotho nation. Khama (Kgama) (ca. 1837-192.3) was king of the Ngwato kindgom. Sobhuza I (ca. 1830S-1839) was king of the Swazi nation. Hintsa was paramount chief of the Gcaleka Xhosa (ca. 1790-1835). Makana (Makanda) (ca. 1780S-1820) was a prophet, war leader and counsellor to the Ndlambe Xhosa. Mzilikazi (ca. 1790-1868) was king of the Ndebele nation.
The quote is from a May 1941 pamphlet, Ten Articles of Faith, by an American political correspondent and commentator, Dorothy Thompson (1893-1961). For details on her life, see Marion Sanders, Dorothy Thompson: A Legend in Her Times (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1973) and Peter Kurth, American Cassandra: The Life of Dorothy Thompson (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1990).
Paul Kruger made such a statement in his last will and testament just before his death in 1904.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, "A Psalm of Life."
The khotla (kgotla) was a Sotho/Tswana institution in which a chief called together the adult males of the "nation" to discuss issues of national importance and adjudicate disputes. Kgoilas were held in an open space in a village setting. Although chiefs and headmen presided over discussions, commoners theoretically had the right to voice opinions, even if they were critical of leaders. Court decisions were not based according to a legal code, but came about through negotiations which usually favored those with status and political influence. For discussions on Tswana kgotlas historically, see Diana Wylie, A Little God: The Twilight of Patriarchy in a Southern African Chiefdom (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1990) and the chapters by Leonard Ngcongco, P. T. Mgadla and A. C. Campbell, and K. Datta and A. Murray in John Holm and Patrick Molutsi, eds., Democracy in Botswana (Gaborone, Botswana: MacmiUan Botswana Publishing Co., 1989).
The African Democratic Party (ADP) had been launched on 26 September 1943. Leading figures in the party were Paul Mosaka, Self Mampuru, and Dan Koza, who later resigned from the ADP. In contrast to the Youth League, the ADP had strong connections with white liberal groups such as the Friends of Africa and the South African Institute of Race Relations. One of its strongest white supporters was Hyman Basner, a lawyer and former Communist and Native Senator. The party's platform was liberal and called for peaceful negotiations with the government and the use of mass passive resistance "as a last resort." The party was a threat for a while to the ANC, and its formation was one reason why Dr. Xuma allowed the Youth League to be formed ”” to pull in young people who may have been attracted to the ADP. The ADP was kept alive until about 1948.
The Fourth International of South Africa (FIOSA) emerged in the early 1940s after a split in the Trotskyist Cape Town-based Lenin Club. FIOSA took a purist line on worker organization and opposed the Communist Party's "Native Republic" thesis, arguing that any compromise with black nationalism diluted working class unity. FIOSA's Johannesburg branch gave its support to the African Democratic Party, though not without reservations. FIOSA died out in the late 1940s.
A leader of the Indian National Congress and India's independence movement, Jawaharlal Nehru (1889-1964) became India's first Prime Minister, 1947-1964.
A lawyer and an ardent republican, Giuseppe Mazzini (1805-1872) was a founder of Young Italy in 1831 and a leading figure in the movement for Italy's unification. Mazzini based his appeals for unification on Italian ethnicity, a contrast to Lembede's Pan African ideals. The quote comes from an address Mazzini delivered on the anniversary of the death of the Bandiera brothers and other Italian patriots, 25July 1848. The full text of the address is found in N. Gangulee, ed., Giuseppe Mazzini: Selected Writings (Westport, Ct.: Greenwood Press, 1974).
Tuberculosis rates among Africans shot up dramatically during the Second World War. For instance, the incidence among Africans in Johannesburg increased from i.o per thousand in 1938 to 1.4 per thousand in 1945. See Randall Packard, White Plague, Black Labour: Tuberculosis and the Political Economy of Health and Disease in South Africa (Berkeley: University of California, 1989), especially chapter 8.
In 1947, Daniel Malan, leader of the National Party, and N. C. Havenga, leader of the Afrikaner Party, agreed on an election pact to combat Jan Smuts' United Party. In the 1948 election, the National Party won 70 seats (previously 43) and the Afrikaner Party 9 (previously none) in the House of Assembly. This represented a majority of seats and the Nationalists were able to form a government.
Hundreds of Africans had converged on Bloemfontein in December 1935 to form the All African Convention (AAC) to rally black opinion against the Hertzog bills, which aimed at removing Cape African voters from the common voters" role. Led by Prof. D. D. T Jabavu, a Fort Hare lecturer, the AAC for several years eclipsed the ANC in popularity, but when it failed to live up to its promise, politicians in the Transvaal and Cape moved to rejuvenate and reorganize the ANC.
We have not been able to identify the author of this poem, but several Afrikaans literature specialists have independently suggested that the author was one of the Afrikaner labor poets who were active during that era.
This quote comes from Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Social Contract.
John Dube (1871-1946) was born at the Inanda mission station in Natal. Educated at Inanda and Amanzimtoti Training College, he went to the United States in 1887 and studied at Oberlin College. He returned to South Africa in 1892 as a teacher and became superintendent of Incwadi Christian Industrial Mission. He had a second sojourn in the U.S., studying theology from 1897 to 1899 at Union Missionary Seminary in Brooklyn. Ordained a Congregational minister, he was attracted to Booker T. Washington's ideas on industrial education and, in 1904, founded his own school, Ohlange Institute, patterned on Washington's ideals. He started a newspaper, Ilanga lase Natal, in 1903 and was its editor until 1915. He was also active in politics, working in the Native National Congress and serving as the first president of the South African Native National Congress (SANNC) from 1912. Until 1917 (the SANNC changed its name to the African National Congress in 1923). A conservative figure, he opposed radicalizing influences in the ANC.
Rev. Zacceus Richard Mahabane (1881-1970) was a Methodist minister. Elected president of the Cape ANC in 1919, he also served as president of the ANC (1924-192.7,1937-1940). He was a founding member of the AAC and its vice president in 1937.
Born in Krugersdorp, Obed Simon David Mooki (1919-1990) was the son of an independent church leader and founded his own church, Mooki Memorial Church, and a school in Orlando. In 1938, he was ordained a minister in the New Church, a London-based church; in 1969 he was made superintendent of the New Church Mission after it had become independent. He was a member and secretary of the Orlando Advisory Board and, in 1953, he became president of the South African Advisory Boards Congress. At various times, he was chairman of the Orlando School Board, chaplain of the Transvaal branch of the African National Congress, and president of the Transvaal Interdenominational African Ministers Association.
S. S. Tema (1899-1981) was born in Ga-Molepo in the Northern Transvaal. A Dutch Reformed Church minister, he pastored a church in Orlando until he took up a position as traveling secretary of the Students' Christian Association in 1941. In 1949 he moved to Pretoria where he was minister at the Atteridgeville Dutch Reformed Church. Later he served as president of the Transvaal Interdenominational African Ministers' Association. He was assistant secretary of the Johannesburg Joint Council of Europeans and Natives. He was a delegate to the Tambaran (India) international missionary conference in 1939, where he met Mahatma Gandhi. After retiring from the ministry in 1968, he was elected to the Lebowa Legislative Assembly.
Born in Vrededorp, Nimrod Boyce Tantsi (1895-1977) worked as an insurance agent and teacher in East London, Bloemfontein, and Johannesburg before taking up the ministry in the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church in 192.9. His father, Japie Zachariah Tantsi, and James Y.Tantsi, had been among the earliest ordained AME ministers. He served churches in Ventersdorp, Boksburg, and Atteridgeville before moving to Lady Selborne in 1939, where he established a number of schools. Later he served circuits in Orlando, Bloemfontein, Heilbron, and Springs. Active in the ANC since its early years, Tantsi was made chaplain for the Transvaal ANC and was elected Acting President of the Transvaal ANC in place of Nelson Mandela in June 1952 during the Defiance Campaign.
Guido Geselle was a popular Flemish poet.
Started in 1940, Inkululeko (Freedom) was an organ of the Communist Party of South Africa. It had been preceded by The International and the South African Workers/Umsebenzi. Although it regularly covered international news, it focused on news in the African community and featured columns in African languages (seSotho, Venda, Zulu). Its editors were M. S. Diphuko and Edwin Mofutsanyana. Inkululeko ceased publication in 1950 after the passage of the Suppression of Communism Act.
The three were leaders of pro-Nazi groups in South Africa. A former Minister of Justice, Oswald Pirow headed up the Nuwe Order (New Order). Dr. J. F. J. van Rensburg was leader of the Ossewa Brandivag. L. T. Weichardt was head of the Grey Shirts. He was interned during the Second World War. For more details, see Patrick Furlong, Between Crown and Swastika: The Impact of the Radical Right on the Afrikaner Nationalist Movement in the Fascist Era (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1991).
Established in 1943, the Non-European Unity Movement (NEUM) was an amalgam of various groups: the All African Convention, the Anti-CAD (Coloured Affairs Department), and the Transkei Organised Bodies. Popular among Coloured and African intellectuals mainly in the western Cape, the NEUM advocated non-collaboration with segregated institutions such as the Natives Representative Council and put forward a Ten-Point Programme (universal franchise, land redistribution, civil rights, free and compulsory education). Although Youth Leaguers were hostile to NEUM, they were influenced by its stances.
This undated document is to be found in the Ballinger Papers (A410, C2..3.9.1), Church of the Province Reading Room, Witwatersrand University.It states that it was written by Lembede for the Youth League.
Lembede is referring to a series of laws which reserved certain jobs on the mines for whites and made it impossible for African workers to advance themselves into skilled poisitions. Among these laws are the Mines and Works Act of 1911 and the Mines and Works Amendment Act of 1926.
Passed in 1924, the Industrial Conciliation Act established industrial councils made up of representatives of employers and registered trade unions, to regulate wages and conditions of service in most sectors of the economy.The legislation aimed to bureaucratize trade unions and curb their activism, but it did not prevent several militant unions from carrying on through the 1930s. The act excluded Africans from its definition of employee, and thus did not cover them. For an analysis of the act, see Robert Davies, "The Class Character of South Africa's Industrial Conciliation Legislation," South African Labour Bulletin 2. (6) (1976).
Passed in 1856 in the Cape Colony, the Masters and Servants Act's main intent was to bind servants to masters by making it an offense for a servant to break a contract (which included desertion, insubordination, and insulting behavior). The law remained in effect until its repeal in 1974, when Alabama dock workers and miners in the United States decided not to off-load South African coal acting on an American law that prohibited the importation of goods produced by forced labor. By then, the Masters and Servants Act had been superseded by other laws controlling black employees, and it no longer served a twentieth-century purpose. See Colin Bundy, "The Abolition of the Masters and Servants Act," South African Labour Bulletin, 2. (May-June 1975): 57-46.
The Industrial and Commercial Workers' Union (ICU) had its heyday in the 1910s, when it attracted upwards of 100,000 members. ANC competition with the ICU was not the only reason for the ICU's rapid demise in the late 192.0S. Other factors included Kadalie's autocratic leadership style, the personal misuse of union funds by ICU officials, the ICU's expulsion of Communists on its executive, Kadalie's associations with white liberals and his reliance on William Ballinger as an adviser, the ICU's attempt to organize workers of differing backgrounds (industrial workers and farm workers) and government persecution.
Following its collapse, the ICU broke into splinter groups. The ICU's general secretary, Clements Kadalie, moved to East London and kept an ICU branch alive there. He and a slate of ICU candidates were elected to the East London Advisory Board in the 1940s, but they did not have national pretensions. Lembede's commentary on the ICU reviving itself may have been because of a May/June 1946 strike at Buffalo Harbor, East London (which white officials attributed to Kadalie) or to reports in the press that Kadalie had submitted evidence in October 1946 to the Natives Law Commission. In any event, an ICU revival never took place.
The opening lines of Wordsworth's "London 1801" read: "Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour; England hath need of thee;"
Selby Msimang (1886-1982.) was present at the launching of the SANNC in 1912 and was one of its stalwarts over the decades. In 1920 he was elected president of the ICU, but stepped aside for Clements Kadalie to avoid an internal dispute. Educated at Edendale Training Institution and Healdtown Institution, he became an interpreter, a mine clerk, a solicitor's clerk (in Pixley Seme's office), and a journalist for Umteteli wa Bantu. In 1935 he became secretary of the All African Convention and was a member of the delegation that met with Hertzog to discuss the "Native" bills. He was provincial secretary of the Natal ANC (1942.-1956) and on the executive of the Liberal Party (1956-1968). See note 5.
This refers to the argument that even though the 1936 legislation did away with the Cape African franchise, there would be compensation ”” European representatives for Africans and a Natives Representative Council. The 1936 compromise is discussed in Saul Dubow, Racial Segregation and the Origins of Apartheid in South Africa, 1919-1936 (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1989).
Founded in 1889 by the major gold mining houses, the Chamber of Mines coordinated policy on issues vital to the profitability of the gold mines such as wages and the recruitment of African labor. The chamber created a monopolistic recruiting organization, the Witwatersrand Native Labour Association, so the mining houses would not have to compete with each other and pay higher wages to black workers.
Born in the Reitz district of the Orange Free State, Jacob M. Nhlapo (1904-1957) was educated at Bensonvale Institution and Lovedale. After teaching at Healdtown, he moved on to Moroka High School in Thaba 'Nchu in 1930 and became its principal in 1934. He was elected vice president of the South African Native Teachers' Association. He received a B.A. from the University of South Africa in 1937 and a Ph.D. from McKinley Roosevelt University in Chicago for his dissertation on "Intelligence Tests and the Educability of the South African Bantu."' He served as principal of Wilber-force Institute from 1940 to 1948 and Boitsheko High School in the western Transvaal. In 1951, he was appointed lecturer at Selly Oak Colleges in Birmingham. Following Selope Thema's death in 1953, he was appointed editor of the Bantu World, a position he stayed in until his death in 1957. He became a member of the ANC executive in 1944 and helped to draft Africans' Claims. Among his publications are Bantu Babel (1944), Nguni and Sotho: A Practical Plan for the Unification of the South African Bantu Languages (1945), and Wilberforce Institute (1949).
Dr. Alfred Bitini Xuma (1893-1962) was president of the African National Congress from 1940 to 1949. Born in Transkei, he traveled to the United States in 1913, studying at Tuskegee Institute and the University of Minnesota, where he was awarded a B.S. in 1920. He completed a M.D. degree in 1926 at Northwestern University. In 192.7 he returned to South Africa, but traveled to the United States on several occasions. In 1935, he participated in the launching of the AH African Convention and was selected as its Vice President. But in the late 1930s, he directed his energies to reviving the ANC and was elected its president in 1940 by a narrow margin. He centralized the ANC's operations and directed a rewriting of the ANC's constitution. He was reluctant to commit the ANC to mass action and that eventually led to his defeat for re-election as ANC president at the 1949 conference.
Dr. Xuma had been an undergraduate at Tuskegee Institute, Washington's school, where he would have learned about Washington's famous "Cast down your bucket where you are" speech. Washington's five-minute oration on race relations, delivered at the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta in 1895, called on blacks and whites to work cooperatively with each other and for whites to open up opportunities for blacks in exchange for blacks accommodating themselves to a segregated status. A well known passage in the speech went: "In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress." See Louis Harlan, Booker T. Washington: The Making of a Black Leader, 1856-1901 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972), pp. 104-28.
Born in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Madie B. Hall met Dr. Xuma on his trip to the United States in 1937-1938. After they married in 1940, she moved to Johannesburg to join him and she stayed in South Africa until Dr. Xuma's death in 1962. She was active in ANC womens' organizations and she helped found the Zenzele self-help movement.
Born in Cofimvaba, Transkei, Templeton T. Ntwasa (1904-1961) attended Lovedale, where he gained a reputation as a fierce fast bowler in cricket, and Fort Hare, where he finished his matric and a B.A. in 1930. He worked as a clerk for the Transkeian Territories General Council. He served his articles with a Mr. Heathcote in Johannesburg and began practicing law in 1941. He left for Transkei in the late 1940s, where he set up law offices in Bizana, Flagstaff, and Mount Ayliff. An accomplished organist and pianist, he played classical music recitals at the Cathedral in Umtata. He arranged for the wedding of Winnie and Nelson Mandela at the town hall in Bizana. He also served as master of ceremonies.
Pixley ka I. Seme (1881-1951) was president of the ANC from 1930 to 1937. He earned a B.A. from Columbia University in 1906 and then completed his law studies at Oxford University. On his return to South Africa, he established a law firm with Alfred Mangena and was one of the founding members of the ANC. He joined with D. D. T. Jabavu in convening the All African Convention, but later turned against it.
In 1919 Rev. F. B. Bridgman of the American Board Mission founded the Bantu Men's Social Centre (BMSC), situated in Eloff St. Extension, to provide cultural and recreational facilities in a Christian setting for African men in and around the Johannesburg area. Peter Abraham's Tell Freedom: Memories of Africa (London: Faber and Faber, 1954) contains a description of the BMSC.
Born in 1911 at Mount Fletcher, Transkei, Victor Vincent Tamsanqa Mbobo was schooled at Lovedale and Fort Hare, where he received a B.A. in 1935. He was an ardent sportsman and rugby enthusiast. He later completed a B.Econ. in 1942. from the University of South Africa. He taught English and Latin at Healdtown and Nyaluza High School, Grahamstown before he was appointed headmaster at Hofmeyr High School, Pretoria. Active in the ANC Youth League, he briefly served on the national executive of the ANC in 1949. In 1947 he represented the Youth League at the World Federation of Democratic Youth Festival in Czechoslovakia. After qualifying as a lawyer, he set up practice at Umtata and Tsolo in Transkei before moving to East London where he died.
This is likely James Mdatyulwa, secretary of the Potchefstroom branch of the African National Gangress and a member of the Potchefstroom Advisory Board.
Randall Peteni (1915- ) was born in Keiskamahoek, Cape. He completed his high school studies at Lovedale, a B.A. (1938) at Fort Hare, and B.A. Honours and M.A. from the University of South Africa. He taught at Heilbron High School (1939-42) at the same time as Lembede as well as Orlando High School (1942-49), Hoernle School (1950-1956), Grahamstown (1958-1961), and New Brighton, Port Elizabeth (1963-68). In 1969, he joined the faculty of Fort Hare, where he taught English until his retirement in 1980. He authored Hill of Fools: A Novel of the Ciskei (London: Heinemann, 1976) and Towards Tomorrow: The Story of the African Teachers' Associations of South Africa (Algonac, Michigan: Reference Publications, 1979).
H. I. E. Dhlomo, Dingane ka Senzangakhona (Pietermaritzburg: Shuter and Shooter, 1936), Thomas Mofolo's Chaka (Morija: Sesuto Book Depot, 1915); John Dube, U ]eqe, The Bodyservant of King Shaka (Lovedale: Love-dale Press, 1951). For the plot outlines of these novels, see Albert Gerard, Four African literatures: Xhosa, Sotho, Zulu, Amharic (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971). For more details on the lives of Mofolo and Dhlomo, see Dan Kunene, Thomas Mofolo and the Emergence of Written Sesotho Prose (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1989) and Tim Couzens, The New African: A Study of the Life and Work of H. I. E. Dhlomo (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1985).
Benedict Wallet Vilakazi (1906-1947) was born at Groutville Mission Station, Natal. He completed his teacher's certificate at St. Francis School, Mariannhill, in 1923 and taught at Mariannhill and Ixopo Seminary. Through private study he obtained a B.A. degree from the University of South Africa in 1934. He was appointed lecturer in the Department of Bantu Studies at Witwatersrand University in 1934. He completed an M.A. in 1938 and a Ph.D. in 1946. His dissertation was titled, "The Oral and Written Literature of the Nguni." He published several novels. Noma Nini (1935), UDingiswayo ka-Jobe (1939), and Nje nempela (1949), and several books of poetry, Inkondlo ka Zulu (1935) and Amal'ezulu (Zulu Horizons). He died in October 1947.
Bambatha's Rebellion was sparked off in 1906 by an unpopular poll tax levied on all unmarried men in Natal. The rebellion took its name from Bambatha, a minor Zulu chief in northern Natal, who led one phase of the rebellion, a guerilla campaign in the Nkandla forests. For details, see Shula Marks, Reluctant Rebellion: the 1906-8 Disturbances in Natal (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970).
"Ukucela intombi" means to ask a family for a woman's hand in marriage.
Lembede is referring to Mikro's [pseudonym for C H. Kuhn] Vreemdelinge (Johannesburg; Afrikaanse Pers-Boekhandel, 1944), which centers on Coloured people, and Helene van Rhyn's Hugenotebloed (Pretoria: J. L. van Schaik, 1933), which dealt with the struggle of a poor white against poverty.
Noma Nini (Forever) (Mariannhill, 1935) was Vilakazi's first novel. Set during the Zulu king Mpande's reign (1840-72), the story centers around the love life of a young woman at Groutville mission.
Formed in 1934, Die Afrikaanse Skrywerskring (The Afrikaans Writers' Association) is affiliated to the international P. E. N. association. It published a quarterly, Tydskrif vir Letterkunde, sponsored writers' festivals and congresses and promoted Afrikaans literature. Headquartered in Pretoria, Die Akademie vir Wetenskap en Kuns was established in 1909 to promote Afrikaans (and Dutch). In 1941, the Academy was divided into two faculties: one for Language and Literature and the other for Science and Technology. The Language and Literature branch has been responsible for such things as monitoring Afrikaans orthography, preserving historic buildings and establishing a research wing, the Africa Institute.
Alexander J. Mackenzie, Propaganda Boom (London: J. Gifford, 1938), p. 9. Mackenzie's book dealt with propaganda techniques and strategies devised for communications (film, radio, and the press) by twentieth century governments. His examples included Great Britain, Soviet Union, Mussolini's Italy and Nazi Germany.
Inkundla ya Bantu (Bantu Forum) started as Territorial News in 1938, but changed its name in 1944. Published in Verulam, Natal, it was one of the few African-owned newspapers in South Africa. After Jordan Ngubane took over as editor in 1944, he tilted the newspaper's coverage towards the ANC, and Youth Leaguers especially used the newspapers as an outlet for their activities and views. Inkundla had a peak circulation of around 7,000 in 1946.
Lembede is referring to Albert Venn Dicey's Introduction to the Study of the Constitution, which had gone through eight editions by the 1940s. For more details on Dicey's life, see Richard Cosgrove, The Rule of Law: Albert Venn Dicey, Victorian Jurist (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980).
John Dube had been the kingpin of the Natal ANC for many decades, but when ill health prevented him from continuing in active politics, his absence set off a power struggle between Dube's supporters who backed Rev. Abner M'timkulu and A. W. G. Champion, a former ICU official whose power base was in Durban's African townships. In a disputed election in 1945 that Xuma had to resolve, Champion was elected Natal ANC Congress president. However, Champion maintained his independence from Xuma's national leadership, and he did not have an amicable relationship with Youth Leaguers. In 1951, Champion was toppled by Albert Luthuli, who was elected ANC national president the following year.
Published fortnightly, Inkundlaya Bantu only became a weekly paper for a brief period in the late 1940s.
The original line from Thomas Campbell's "Hallowed Ground" reads "To live in hearts we leave is not to die."
"They die young, whom the Gods love" is a phrase that appears in several sources: Manander's Dis Exapaton, Plautus's Bacchides, and Byron's Don Juan.
Born in Ladysmith, Sister Bernadette Sibeko (1908- ) was introduced to the Catholic church when she went for schooling at Mariannhill, where her teacher was Father Bernard Huss. She received a teachers' and university certificate there. In 1929 she joined the Catholic order of the Daughters of St. Francis of Assisi and continued with her teaching career at schools around the Mariannhill area. She has translated twenty-one books from English into Zulu, including the New Testament. In 1975 she completed a D.D. degree. She presently lives at Assisi Convent, Port Shepstone, Natal.
Founded by Trappist monks near Durban in 1892, Mariannhill was a center for Catholic missions and education, with dozens of schools established for Africans. Teachers such as Alfred Bryant and Bernard Huss were prominent names associated with Mariannhill education. For details on MariannhiU's history, see Francis Schimlek, Mariannhill: A Study in Bantu Life and Missionary Effort (Mariannhill: Mariannhill Mission Press, 1953) and Mariannhill and Its Apostolate (Reimlingen via Nordlingen, Germany: St. Joseph Mission Press, 1964).
Hamilton Makhanya (1895-1981) grew up in Durban and attended school in Victoria St. He attended Adams College and later taught there. He also taught at several schools before being promoted to school inspector. After his retirement, he served as Secretary of the Tribal Council in the Umbumbulu district.
First named Amanzimtoti Training Institute, Adams College was founded in 1853 by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions for the education of Africans. Renamed after Dr. Newton Adams, a medical missionary who died at Amanzimtoti mission station in 1847, the school was patterned after other elite African educational institutions.
Born in Boston, Massachusetts, Father John Ochs (1905-1957) joined the Oblates of Mary Immaculate in 1928 and was ordained in 1935 after completing his theological studies at the Catholic University in Washington, D.C. He moved to Natal in 1935 and served in Newcastle, Grayville, Dundee, and St. Paul's Parish in Durban. In 1953 he accepted an appointment as secretary for the Department of African Affairs of the Secretariate of the Southern African Catholic Bishop's Conference.
McCord Zulu Hospital was opened on Berea Hill, Durban in 1909. Its founder. Dr. James McCord, an American medical missionary, has written an account of his experiences. My Patients Were Zulus (New York: Rinehart, 1946).
Bennet Makalo Khaketla (1913- ) was Lembede's roommate in Heilbron in the Orange Free State in the early 1940s. Born in the Qacha's Nek district, he moved to Lesotho in 1946 to take up a teaching post at Basutoland High School. With Ntsu Mokhehle, he edited Mohlabani (The Warrior), which vociferously attacked British colonial rule and served as a mouthpiece for the Basutoland African Congress. He was elected to the Legislative Council in i960. After breaking with Mokhehle in late i960, he joined the pro-monarchy Marema-TIou Freedom Party. He was a journalist and a translator for the Bible Society. After the military coup ousting Leabua Jonathan in 1986, he was appointed Minister of Justice, a position he held until 1990.
His book, Lesotho 1970 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971) re-mains a standard work on the politics of that period. He is also a well-known dramatist {Moshoeshoe le Baruti (Morija: Sesuto Book Depot, 1947)), novelist (Mosali a Nkhola (Johannesburg: Afrikaanse Pers Boekhandel, 1960)), and poet (Lipshantathe (Pretoria: Afrikaanse Pers Bpk., 1954)).
Nicholas Lembede (1916-1976) was a student at Inkanyezi Primary School in Umbumbulu before attending Adams College and Mariannhill, where he completed his teachers' (T4) diploma. He maintained his home at the Lembede's homestead at Mphephetho, but taught at schools around Natal. He married his wife Phillipine in 1939.
Born near Alice, Julius Malie (1918-1970) moved to Pretoria as a youth and grew up in his grandmother's home. Educated at Lovedale and the University of the Witwatersrand, he succeeded J. R. Rathebe as secretary of the Bantu Men's Social Centre. He also worked for the YMCA, the South African Institute of Race Relations, and the Bantu World. In the 1940s, he was active in the Left Club and the ANC Youth League, but in the 1950s he joined the Liberal Party. He took part in the Consultative Conference of African Leaders in December i960 and was appointed to its continuation committee.
He was arrested for his participation in the continuation committee and accused of furthering the aims of the ANC. He was convicted under the Suppression of Communism Act, but the charges were dropped on appeal. He left South Africa for Lesotho in mid-1961 and worked thereafter as a freelance journalist.
Born in Edinburgh in 1871, Prof. Thomas Miller Forsyth taught philosophy at Grey University College, Bloemfontein (1911-33) and Rhodes University (1941-44). He published English Philosophy: A Study of Its Method and General Development (London: A. and C. Black, 1910).
Cyril Edwin Mitchinson Joad is not usually listed in such august company. A British philosopher and professor at the University of London, he cultivated a broad audience in Britain after the First World War through his essays and radio broadcasts. He was part of the neorealist movement, which included such eminent figures as Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell. Among Joad's several dozen books are Common-Sense Ethics (London: Methuen and Co., 192.1), The Present and Future of Religion (London: E. Benn, 1930), and Guide to Philosophy (London: V. GoUancz, 1936).
Born in Canada, Father Gerard Martin (1896-1977) entered the Oblates of Mary Immaculate (OMI) in 1917 and was ordained a priest in 192.1. He was one of the first Canadian OMI priests assigned to Basutoland in 192.3 and was a key figure in starting up a seminary for Basotho priests. From 1930 to 1933 he served as Administrator Apostolic until Bishop Bonhomme's arrival. He helped establish the Catholic printing works at Mazenod. He later moved to the Witwatersrand, where he was the Liaison Missionary Priest between families in Lesotho and family members working on mines. He also worked on missions in the West Rand and Soweto, including Orlando Township.
This Arabic quotation was cited by Arthur Barlow in a note following Walter Nhlapo's tribute to Lembede {Barlow's Weekly, 16 August 1947, p. 19).
A teacher, Victor Lembede (1929-1991) was principal of KwaSikhama Secondary School and owned several stores. He was killed at one of his stores in 1991, a victim of the internecine fighting in the Umbumbulu area.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, "A Psalm of Life."
James "Sofasonke" Mpanza (1889-1970) was a leading figure in squatter movement politics in Orlando township. After serving a jail term for murder from 1914 to 192.7, he became a teacher in Pretoria before moving to Johannesburg. In 1944, he responded to massive housing shortages by leading a movement of squatters outside Orlando. His Sofasonke Party was also active in township politics, and he was repeatedly elected to the Orlando Advisory Board.
A leading activist in Brakpan and the ANC Youth League, Joseph Malepe was voted on to the executive of the African National Congress. He also participated in the Transvaal African Teachers' Association (TATA), serving as its president from 1945 to 1947. In the 1950s, he joined Selope Thema's National-minded Bloc.
Born in Pimville, Paul Mosaka (1907-1963) studied at Healdtown and Fort Hare, where he completed a B.A. majoring in psychology and ethics. He taught at Healdtown before taking up a post at Moroka High School, Thaba 'Nchu. After moving to Orlando to run a general dealers' business owned by Dr. James Moroka, he became involved in politics. He was elected to the Natives Representative Council and was a founder of the African Democratic Party.
On 7 September 1946, Oriel Letuma Monongoaha led about 800 families to set up a shanty settlement at Pimville. His organization was the Pimville Sub-Tenants Vigilance Committee. The numbers soon swelled to 2400 families. When the police ejected them, many of them moved to Orlando, where Monongoaha led most of them. They called themselves the "Homeless Ex-servicemen." Lembede provided legal advice for Monongoaha's group.
Yusuf Dadoo (1909-1983) was a Communist Party activist and a leading figure in the South African Indian Congress. He earned a medical degree at Edinburgh University. In 1945 he was elected president of the Transvaal Indian Congress; in 1950 he was chosen president of the South African In dian Congress. He was a leader of the anti-pass campaign in 1946. He promoted closer unity between the South African Indian Congress and the African National Congress. In I95X he was jailed for his participation in the Defiance Campaign. In i960 he left South Africa for Britain, where he remained prominent in anti-apartheid work. He joined the Communist Party in 1939. In 1972 he was elected chairman of the South African Communist Party, a position he retained until his death.
Ngubane went on to describe the interest in establishing a Lembede scholarship fund.
The ideas of Marcus Garvey, a Jamaican-born black nationalist, exploded on the South African scene after the First World War. Founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association in Jamaica in 1914, he trans-planted his movement to New York In 1916 and developed a large following in the United States and throughout the black world. His organization had a strong presence in Cape Town and had chapters scattered throughout the rest of South Africa. Garvey's promotion of black self-reliance, positive self-images and black unity had a profound influence on black South Africans on many levels. The apex of Garvey's influence was in the 1910s, but his ideas were debated in African political circles in South Africa for several more decades. The Garvey movement in South Africa is given extensive treatment in Robert Hill and Greg Pirio, " 'Africa for the Africans': The Garvey Movement in South Africa, 1920-1940," in The Politics of Race, Class & Nationalism in Twentieth Century South Africa, edited by Shula Marks and Stanley Trapido, 209-53. London: Longman, 1987.