Chapter 9 - Conclusion

Josiah Gumede, 1867-1946: An Historical Assessment

"Gumede and John Dube are the pioneers who were the inspiration and foundation upon which the new leaders were trying to build".

These were the words of A.B. Xuma who in 1943 moved a resolution that the ANC bestow honorary life presidencies on the two veteran Natal politicians.

It is a truism that there is a group of people, whether of a political, socio-economic or religious stature, who exercise a profound influence on the course of events at some crucial point in the history of their countries. Consider past African leaders like Kwame Nkrumah, Jomo Kenyatta, Seretse Khama and Samora Machel. In a very important respect they were the makers of the African Continent on which we are living today. Biographers' greatest challenge is neither to exaggerate nor to underestimate the influence and significance of their subjects. The truth lies between the two extremes.

Fifty years have passed since Josiah Gumede's death in November 1946.

Who was Josiah Gumede? It is no exaggeration to state that Gumede was a respected leader in Black protest politics in South Africa. Gumede lived through an age when the African tribes were not only being subjected increasingly to military conquest and political control, but the African people were being told that they were basically inferior racially and culturally. Consequently their subservient position was natural and proper.

Gumede's socio-economic and political career spans a most remarkable and critical period in South African and World history. Among the developments most immediately pertinent to an inquiry into Gumede's political activities were: his negotiations on behalf of Dinizulu to curb the Transvaal Boers' land hunger; his involvement with the petition of two Sotho communities to secure their ancestral lands; his views on the Native Land Act and his subsequent visit to England in 1919-21; his partial conversion to Communism and historic participation in the Tenth Anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution in Moscow; his ousting as president of the ANC in 1930; and his unsuccesful bid for election to the Native Representative Council.

That he was an intellectual is apparent in many of his moral and political activities and historiography. Significantly, Gumede was not only a participant in the making of history but also an eloquent African historian who valued the power of the pen. He was able to draw upon his extensive knowledge of the history of his native country, and, following his five extensive overseas visits, of foreign countries. He was constantly aware of successive Union governments' attempts to suppress their voices and as Guy argues, "deeply concerned about the judgement of history". Throughout his career Gumede had been at the forefront of his people's struggle for liberation and had given his own interpretation of those struggles and related ideologies. Gumede's historical writings are to be found in archives and libraries in South Africa as well as in Europe. No previous study has sought to explore the scope of his historiography. This thesis has attempted to bring Gumede out of the shadow into the light where critic and admirer can evaluate his historiographic contribution to the course of South African history. I have tried to go beyond the prejudice and ideologies of the time and reveal something of the deeper historical forces, which provided the context in which Gumede's career unfolded.

Josiah Gumede's courage in the face of severe adversity is legendary. None of his three ANC predecessors, Dube, Makgatho and Mahabane spoke out against the intolerable African policy of the Union government as forcefully as Gumede. To the South African government he was a highly suspect agitator who had to be kept under close surveillance. Writing about Gumede's public speeches after his return from Moscow in 1928, Douglas Wolton of the CPSA observed that they 'electrified' his audiences at mass meetings. His agitation of a 'militant and fighting policy' against the government at the historic ANC congress in 1930 made him very unpopular with the conservatives within the ANC and led to his ousting as President.

Nothing is clearer about Gumede's political career than the fact that he was a very complex person, possessing all the human faults and failings every human being is born with. Indeed, Gumede had his intellectual limitations and faults. In 1919, in the wake of industrial unrest and strife in Natal, and to the great satisfaction of the Natal authorities, he figured as the latter's apologist to the extent of trying to discredit the Socialist movement in the province.

This was the same Gumede who, in 1917, had testified that his "freedom and liberty is being restricted in Natal". 764 It is against this background that one should interpret Peter Walshe's remark that "Gumede's speeches do not suggest that he had an outstanding or independent intellect". 765 True, Gumede and the early ANC leaders (Dube, Mahabane and Makgatho) shared a distaste for political theory which seemed to contradict their views on Christianity.

However, Walshe and others overlooked the fact that Gumede's political consciousness was not shaped on the same principles as those of the white South African politicians. Allan Boesak claims that White South African politicians' political consciousness was shaped mainly by public debate, open information, uncensored government reports, or by participating in a normal way in the democratic process of government. Contrary to this, Gumede's political consciousness was shaped mainly by his constant political protests, his sustained confrontation with the Natal and later the Union governments. Having personally experienced the futility of appeals for aid from the Imperial government, Gumede absorbed the lesson that their struggle for national liberation would be fought out on South African soil.

One of the most encouraging truths about Gumede was his willingness to serve his people. This is no idle claim; it is seen nowhere more clearly than in the sacrifices and hardships he went through during the last months of his stay in England in 1921. After his election as President-General in 1927, Gumede sold his tracts of land to devote himself to politics of a full-time basis. While filling the position as Manager of Abantu Batho, he made immense personal financial sacrifices to save Congress's newspaper, but to no avail.

An important significance of his overseas deputations was that he recognised the similarities between the struggles of colonised and oppressed groups, in particular, Africans living in Britain and France. Addressing influential audiences in Britain, Brussels, France, Germany and Russia, Gumede called on politicians, humanitarians and sympathisers to exercise pressure on the Union Government to encourage relief for the Africans from racial discrimination. Over the years Africans in South Africa have received tremendous support and encouragement from their fellow brothers and sisters in Western Europe, America as well as the Soviet Union. Presently influential ANC figures occupy ambassadorial posts in Britain, France and Washington.

Hopefully those ambassadors know of Gumede's missions during the 1920s.

During his overseas campaigns in the 1920s Gumede's path crossed those of many well-disposed editors of prominent newspapers who took a strong stand and criticised the Union Government's anti-African Policy.

The late Oliver Tambo applauded Gumede as the first ANC president to foster closer ties with the Soviet Union, solely in an attempt to consider whether a more militant type of agitation, in particular, civil disobedience, would lead towards national liberation of the oppressed. Tambo viewed Gumede's visit to the Soviet Union in 1927 "not only as a brave deed those days, (but) it was a pioneering act". 766 It was in this period that an ANC-CPSA alliance was born and nurtured through the work of people like Josiah and Moses Kotane. This study has tried to show that the relationship was not always an intimate one, especially after the Durban Riots of 1929 when Gumede took a rather anti-Communist stand for fear of being prosecuted for his role in the riots. As explained, the Comintern regarded Gumede's testimony as reactionary and repudiated the CPSA for their continued courtship with Gumede. Only in the 1940s, with the Soviet Union's entry into the Second World War on the side of the Allied Forces did the ANC-CPSA alliance partly revive. Gumede was one of the oldest Congress members to sanction the formation of the ANC Youth League in December 1943 and encourage them to support an anti-pass campaign launched by the CPSA. When Gumede died in 1946 the alliance was somewhat stronger. The banning of the CPSA and ANC in 1950 and 1960 respectively by the Nationalists ultimately brought the two organisations closer together.

The past seven years have seen some of the most exciting developments in the history of the ANC: in 1994 it moved from a liberation movement to ruling government party. Among the members of the National Assembly was none other than one of Josiah's sons, Archie Gumede. "JT was my spiritual mentor", claimed Archie. 767 Josiah' search for freedom, fair play and justice has been accomplished. It now rests on the shoulders of his son passionately to defend and guard our fragile democracy against abuse of power and corruption.

In conclusion, what has been said in a tribute to the late comrade Joe Slovo also holds true for Gumede, namely that the "success of the South African miracle of April 1994 owed much to Slovo" ... as it did also to Josiah Tshangana Gumede, 1867-1946. 768