Say It out Loud - The 1919 Presidential Address, Cape Town, 22nd April, 1919

From the book: Say It out Loud by Mohamed Adhikari

The 1919 Presidential Address, Cape Town, 22nd April, 1919 ¹

We are meeting for the first time for a period of five years. Momentous events have happened meanwhile ­ events that transcend in importance all that hitherto have happened in the history of mankind. A devastating war, marked by ruthless barbarity and fiendish cruelty, has swept over that portion of the world, which has boasted of the highest development of human civilisation. We have seen a nation in which the Reformation first took root display a revulsion against Christianity, and set up as a national creed the doctrine of irresponsible force. In order to conquer that gigantic evil the Coloured people twice tendered their services, and twice were those services refused by our Government on the ground that it was a white man's war. Eventually, however, we were invited to take part in the great struggle, and were made the associates of the Powers that did their best to crush militarism and brute force.

The League of Nations is nothing but an attempt made to secure that better land of hope where a spirit of human brotherhood will replace the bitter competitive spirit of the past, in which " patriotism and profits " kissed each other. To the work of the Peace Conference in settling the affairs of the world do we direct our eyes in the hope that it will frame an agreement as regards the governance of the world which will make for a just and equitable treatment of all classes and all colours, of all nations, and of all races, of all creeds and of all countries.

RECORD OF THE COLOURED PEOPLES

In this settlement of the world's difficulties I think that the Coloured races of Asia and of Africa are entitled to the fullest consideration. Our people responded nobly to the call of the British Empire. They did not hang back, despite the rebuff they met with when they first offered their services, and despite their thousand and one genuine grievances they rallied round the flag, while a certain section of white South Africans, who had received all the blessings of self-government, declared that England's difficulty was their opportunity to strike for Independence. In all the fields of war the Coloured races, both civilised and uncivilised, of the world covered themselves with glory. In France, in Egypt and in Palestine, in East Africa and West Africa, representatives of the Coloured races of the world assisted in no small measure in the awful struggle to crush that Frankenstein monster of militarism which was out to gain the mastery of the world. Every general under whom our soldiers served has borne testimony to the courage and loyalty of our troops. Having shared in the dangers of war, shall we not be permitted to participate in the rewards of victory? That is a question that our people are asking, and we trust that the future will show that a broader, juster and a saner view of the obligations of human brotherhood are to prevail throughout the world in the future.

It was because of this confident assurance that we have of the justice of our claim to equality in the State that we have submitted to the Peace Conference a statement of our position in the Union of South Africa, and of our demands regarding the future control of the territories forced from Germany largely by the aid of Coloured troops. That statement was prepared in pursuance of resolutions passed at public meetings of Coloured people throughout the Union, and will be submitted to you for approval. The Coloured races of the world are much interested in our position, and they can surely speak with some claim to be heard in the world's council. Without going so far as to assert that without the aid of India, Japan, China, and lastly Africa the war would have taken a different course, it can assuredly be said that our people played no insignif i cant part in winning the war.

INDIA'S SPLENDID EFFORT

Just consider how liberally India gave in money as well as in men! She sent one and a quarter million men overseas; 10,000 of her bravest sons lie buried in France. Surely that glorious Empire may also expect fuller liberty and a greater share in self-government; and we are pleased to note that there is evidence in some quarters of a readiness to recognise the demands of that portion of the Empire to relief from the benevolently despotic government which they have so long enjoyed.

Indians were thrown into the forefront of the battle-line to stop the first onrush of the German army. Zouaves became the "storm" troops of France, and no troops fought with greater tenacity. Lastly, American Negro soldiers helped to turn the Germans back in the closing stages of the war. Our own boys and the labour contingents have done work that should never be forgotten by either black or white in this country. Non-European soldiers and labourers lie buried in the fields of France, of Egypt, of Mesopotamia, and in the Colonies lately under the rule of Germany. What is to be the reward of the Coloured races? What is to be our reward? That is what we want to know. Is our lot to be no different from what it has been in the past? Will there be the same disappointment as we met in 1902? We sincerely trust not.

SOUTH AFRICA'S OPPORTUNITY

South Africa has now a unique opportunity of redressing the many wrongs the non-Europeans suffer to this day. Unmistakable signs are visible everywhere of a reconstruction of society. Can she allow the rest of the world to emerge with a new structure of society, based on mutual aid among individuals, as will undoubtedly be the case, and she alone withhold from her non-European population the opportunities of living decent lives? Alas! No. It must not be. We look forward to the day when South Africa will begin to appreciate the trust she has undertaken, will begin to realise that the progress and prosperity of the country depend largely upon a contented and happy Coloured people. The history of our people in South Africa has so far been one long record of injustice and cruel wrongs; and since the Union legislation has tended to aggravate our feelings of resentment at such unjust treatment. As far back as 1906, at our conference held in Cape Town, I ventured to warn Europeans of a danger that was threatening the then Cape Colony. In speaking of the grievances of the Coloured people in the North, I said: "They gratefully acknowledged that they in this part of South Africa were not so badly off. Their grievances could be rectified under their constitution. But this wave of ill-feeling was spreading from the North, and the phrase 'equal rights for all civilised men' was lost sight of." Further, I expressed the hope that "Europeans in the Cape Colony who wished to treat Coloured people with fair play would do their best to check the evil before it was too late." Again, in 1907, I went further. I advised Europeans that they would soon have a golden opportunity if they really sought to promote the real welfare of non-Europeans, if they desired peace and happiness for all. You will recollect that the question of closer union of the four Colonies was under discussion. Speaking on the subject in the Metropolitan Hall, November 1907, I said: "We are about to enter upon a most critical era of South African history. South Africa by federating will enter upon her career as a nation builder. Her institutions will then be her own, and whether these shall be modelled upon the models of the dark ages, or whether they shall be something higher and something nobler, whether these institutions shall follow those of the Transvaal and of the Orange River Colony ­ these are questions that all Europeans should consider very carefully before we enter into any federation. If South Africans really sincerely wish to liberalise their institutions, then let that federal constitution be framed by men influenced by the eternal rule of order and of justice. Let that Federal Constitution be a comprehensive one. Let it embrace human rights and human liberty with their widest application. If it must recognise inequalities, then let it not originate others, but let your federal Parliament be the rising sun of the South African nation. Unless the deepest sense of Justice and the widest conception of citizenship are apparent in the spirit of our Federal Constitution, then all attempts at nation-making are doomed to failure. The reason why of all the City Commonwealths none had so glorious and so long a day of greatness as Rome, is because none were so generous of its franchise. Let us, therefore, be warned by the teachings of history, and encouraged by the liberal spirit of the countries which are the homes of freedom, build our nation on a Constitution that provides even-handed justice to every section of the people."

A WARNING ­ NOT A THREAT

That warning was given in all seriousness by one who wished his country to proceed on just and safe lines ­ who wished his country to be saved from the Nemesis that always follows class injustice and class oppression. It was a warning and not a threat. It was ignored. Were the inequalities and injustices of the North re-enacted, but others were actually super-added; we were deprived in this Province of part of our political rights. Thus Union has meant a great set-back to the Coloured people in South Africa in political freedom and individual liberty. Speaking in Kimberley in 1913,I referred to our position in straightforward, and as I thought, and still think, fair language, when the Press of South Africa for that speech roundly denounced me. I observed how "White South Africans," amid exuberant exultations and a chorus of hozannahs, wildly welcomed the Act of Union as a beacon light that would blaze down through ages of history, indicating the commencement of peace and prosperity for the land and the birth of a new nation ­ the foundation of a new nationalism. May I ask whether Union has or has not belied the sanguine hopes of its authors? It certainly has produced a new nationalism ­ a nationalism of the party of the section of the Europeans who arrogate the title Nationalists to themselves and whose nationalism is synonymous with all bitterness and uncharitableness, with race, pride and prejudice. Not one of the advantages predicted has followed Union; there has been no effacement of racial bitterness between the two white races in South Africa, but they have drifted and are drifting farther apart. In addition to the racial strife that prevailed between the white races, the Act of Union unmeasurably widened the gulf between white and black.

SHATTERED CONFIDENCE

Today I regret to say the Coloured races have not the same confidence in the rule of the white man in South Africa as they had prior to the Union. The feeling of distrust is growing, and the reasons are obvious. He who runs may read. Just review the history of the Union legislation. But before doing so, I should like to give one instance where Union has failed to improve the lot of non-European in the Northern Provinces. In my first presidential address in 1906, from which I have already quoted, I said, " in the Orange Free State one could see what despotism meant and what the brute part of man could do. Twenty-four hours after arrival one has to report one, register, and take out a card, live in a location, and hunt for work; and if no work was found, move to the next town. Every female, married or single, must carry a pass, and every girl over sixteen years of age was forced in the service of some white person. " You will remember that just prior to the Great War women folk were thrown into prison, compelled to go barefooted in the depths of winter, and subjected to other cruelties, because they refused to carry passes. You will also recollect that the laws were suspended during the war; and finally, but for the timely intervention of the Government would again have been enforced against the women a few days after the Armistice was signed, as a reward for the part their husbands played in the war. Thus you will see that as far as the Free State is concerned, the lot of non-Europeans has not improved. Union has brought them but cold comfort, and Union has accentuated our own position rather than improved it. In less than a decade so many glaring evils have been piled up that the lot of the Coloured man is well nigh unbearable. I have referred to this over and over again, but a further repetition will be justified. Soon after the Union was consummated, in short, just after prayers were read on the first day of the first session of the first Union Parliament, the Dutch Reformed Church Act was enacted. That Act so heinously infamous, not only debars a Coloured person, but would exclude the Founder of Christianity Himself from membership of that Church in the O.F.S. and the Transvaal. That, of course, is easily explained for the Republican Constitution of those two Provinces contained a clause, which specifically declared that there should be "no equality in Church or State between white and black." How well they maintain the spirit of their old Constitutions is apparent from the many attempts made year after year in the Union Parliament to reduce the Coloured people to a state of slavery.

Again, take the railway regulations. These are framed to humiliate and degrade us. The Natives' Land Act only waits being put into operation, and were it not for the Great War and the stout opposition by Europeans in certain parts of the Union to any cultivable land being given to the natives, the natives would ere this have felt the harshness of that Act. Nevertheless, already thousands of natives have been forced to trek into Basutoland, and eventually, when the Act is enforced there will be hundreds of thousands of landless and homeless serfs to satisfy the insistent demands for cheap labour.

SOUTH AFRICA'S SLAVE STATE

Finally, an attempt was made only last month in the Union Parliament by certain sections of its members to prevent any native squatter, or his minor children under the age of 21 years in the Free State from working for anyone without the consent of the farmer on whose land the parent resides. Can there be any doubt in the mind of any one that I was not justified some ten years ago in describing the Free State as the " Slave State " of the British Empire? Sir, there is no need to give a detailed list of the steady and persistent attempts both by legislative measures and administrative acts to reduce the non-Europeans to a lower status than they held prior to Union. The Coloured people are too painfully aware of them all. They feel the pain of the stigma in the inmost recesses of their souls; they feel it even worse than " the flaying of the back with knotted scourges. " The cause for this reversal of the Cape policy is not far to seek. I warned Europeans in 1906 and again in 1907, and again, since then right up to Union, that the spirit which had begotten the Constitutions of the two old Republics was insidiously creeping into the Cape and undermining our policy of justice and freedom. The warning was ignored; and today all impartial men must admit that not only has the spirit of no opportunity to rise, the spirit of repression, the spirit that the black man shall be kept out of the skilled trades ­ not only has that spirit become more intensive and effective in practice in the Transvaal and in the Free State, but its miasmatic influence has spread through the length and breadth of the Union, and is slowly possessing the minds of many of our Cape men. There are unmistakable signs that the policy of equality of opportunity ­ such as it was ­ that prevailed here has almost vanished, and that the days when there was a fairly happy and contented Coloured population are fast fading away. But the contrast between the policy of the North, and that of the Cape is still discernible in many directions. It is, therefore, not too late to stem the tide of prejudice, which, beginning in the North, is sweeping in its pestilential rush through our country, blasting all our hopes and destroying every noble instinct in the white man's breast. To the Cape members of Parliament, who have on many occasions gallantly and determinedly fought this colour prejudice in the Union House of Assembly, we are certainly much indebted. Unfortunately, they are in a hopeless minority, and thus unable to check the evil. But much is done outside the Parliament to shake the confidence of the Coloured man in the rule of the white man. As an example I might cite, first of all, the administration of justice as it affects the Coloured man. This is a shame and a disgrace to any civilised country. One, however, would expect fair treatment above all in a Court of Justice, if not elsewhere; and yet Judges in our courts are powerless at times to enforce their desire to see justice administered in an even-handed manner. On more than one occasion have Judges in the Supreme Court commented on the eccentric and even unjust verdicts of juries. Then there is the conduct of the police force. Their treatment of the Coloured people is scandalous. We hear from every part of the Union of the grossly unfair and inhumanly cruel treatment of Coloured people by a police force whose prestige is rapidly declining.

TYRANNY OF TRADE UNIONS

Lastly, just think of the brutal treatment of Coloured workers, who were terrorised by white Trade Unionists into abandoning their work, and then cruelly left to starve without any assistance. Will the Coloured workers ever forget such heartless brutality? When will they organise to protect the right to work? I trust soon. From many other fields could I cite instances of injustice shown to our people, but I think the above are sufficient to explain the present unrest among all non-Europeans in the Union. One fact everyone must admit, and that is that never before have even that natives protested so loudly and so frequently in public meetings against the whole system of Government. It is time that the position of all non-European races in the Union was thoroughly investigated. Possibly it may be found that all these acts of injustice do not arise so much from a lack of feeling on the part of an aggressive white population as from a spirit of uncharitableness, and alack of breath of humanity which has been fostered by the false ideals of life that prevailed in a community that reeks with commercialism and landlordism. It may be that we have not yet discovered the cause of the trouble. But whatever the cause, there are undoubtedly very many ugly signs of unrest; there are signs of discontent. In making the investigation it should be borne in mind that all philosophers and poets have asserted that a society based on a "cash-nexus" is bound to deteriorate. Oliver Goldsmith said, "Honour sinks where commerce long prevails," and Wordsworth spoke of the degeneracy of a race when "men change swords for ledgers, and desert the students' bower for gold." This false basis for any civilisation may be largely responsible for the racial prejudice that prevails amongst us. It certainly has had much to do with the great upheaval that the world has just passed through. However, it is a purely economic basis and the very antithesis of Christ's teaching; and more than elsewhere now is this the basis of civilisation in the Northern Provinces. It is no wonder that amidst such a society there may be heard at times the voice of some whose conscience urges them to ask, what are their responsibilities? Are they their brother's keeper? On this point a great deal is heard. But it seems to me that the opinion is gradually gaining ground in the non-European world that the euphonious phrase the "white man's burden" has been a self-imposed task of making laws and administrative regulations to exploit non-European peoples and to keep them in subjection. We have heard little or nothing of the "black man's burden," and yet his has been infinitely greater and more grievous. In South Africa he has cleared the soil for his white master. He has planted the vine so that he may be demoralised in nature and character by cheap vile poison. He has built railways and helped to feed them so that he may be humiliated and insulted when fate compels him to travel by them. He has gone down into the bowels of the earth to dig for gold so that white labour unions may come into existence and thus oust him from skilled trades. He has taken out of the earth diamonds so that German students may be sent to Oxford to learn of the greatness of the British Empire. He is taxed for the education of the white child so that 300,000 non-European children may grow up in ignorance and barbarism. He remained loyal to the British flag in South Africa, so that he may be handed over to his traditional enemy; and, finally, he again rallied round the flag in the great war, left his child behind to grow fat on two pence a day, so that he may do his duty to the Empire, the Allies and civilisation.

NEED FOR ORGANISATION

He awaits his reward with his usual patience. But we hope that the long overdue recognition of the incalculable services rendered by non-Europeans to South Africa will not be delayed very much longer. Until that is forthcoming, we should insist upon equal opportunities for developing according to our endowments and for enjoying life according to our capacities. We must protest against any curtailment of our rights in that direction, whether they are political, educational, industrial or social. But if in spite of our protests the policy of oppression continues, the time will come as sure as we see it today in Europe, when the authors of it will rue the day when it was begun, and lament the share they took in its enforcement. I want to emphasise the fact that this is no threat. It is a sober and serious warning; and the only way to avert a cataclysm is to cry halt in this silly, this preposterous attempt to humiliate any race of human beings. Such an attempt is doomed to failure, to disastrous failure. Now I want to appeal to you, representative Coloured people, assembled here to-night, to consider the situation that has lately existed in Johannesburg. You saw how Coloured workers were forced by white trade unionists with pistol in hand to down tools in Johannesburg and then starve. You have read in the newspapers that there was a vile discrimination in the treatment meted out to white strikers, and to native strikers in that district; and I trust you have learned the proper lesson from those incidents. The white workers have their unions. They are organised and therefore a power in the land. You must bend all your energies to organising your people. Without organisation the Coloured people can expect little or no betterment of their condition. By being organised we can make our wants known, can press for the recognition of our just demands and obtain redress of the many grievances. That is the only way we can hope to emerge from the condition of economic and political bondage into the light of liberty and manhood. We must aim at the recovery of our full political rights, and, again, I repeat that organised effort is the only means whereby we can attain that object. Along with our economic and political freedom we must see to it that we attend to the education of the child. Very little is done in the Union by the Provincial Councils to educate the Coloured and native children. It is pleasing to record that the Cape Provincial Council spends more on Coloured education than all the other Provinces put together. But even here salaries paid to those occupied in this noble profession are miserably inadequate. For instance, two male assistants in a school of which I am manager are paid £1 6s. a week, while the attendants at the sanitary chalets of Cape Town receives £ 11 Os. a week. That is a pretty state of affairs which permits of chalet attendants being paid higher than those into whose hands are entrusted the education and the whole future of the Coloured race. Be that as it may, the education of the rising generation must not be neglected. Without education we shall not be able to lead really full lives. We must see that the next generation is better educated than we are. We must provide at any cost and at any sacrifice the best education possible for our children. Give them that inestimable blessing and their future is assured. But to the education they will receive at schools you can assist immensely by living in their presence worthy lives.

At this critical juncture in the world's history you will be called to play an important part. When everything is in a state of unrest, when kingdoms are tottering and falling, and peoples are perishing; when economic systems are being questioned and new conditions arising; when the worker is claiming and asserting his claims, sometimes by force, to his fullest share in the production of the world's goods; when anarchy is rampant, and no one knows how long society will remain stable ­ you will be called upon to exert a steadying force, it may be. What attitude will you take? You will undoubtedly support a just government and do your best to secure full recognition of your own rights by equitable means; but unless you present a united front ­ and that you cannot do unless you are organised ­ your position will be worse than ever. Organisation and education are the levers by means of which you can raise your social status; make yourselves men and women, and secure the fullest freedom. Enlarge your minds, strengthen your characters by leading sober, honest and worthy lives, and your children will respect you and become worthy citizens. Do not be satisfied with the lot of a helot, cultivate

The last parade. At the dispersal camp, Maitland, 5th September 1919.
An officer of the Demobilisation staff (Captein Keohane) addressing the men prio demobilisation. Photo by Fisher's studio, Maitland

" The thirst to know and understand

A large and liberal discontent, These are the things in life's rich land,

The things that are more excellent. "

Unless you do this you will live in the State, which Matthew Arnold once said most men live who " never once possess them before they die. "