Forunners

We have already said that the All African Convention should be viewed as one further step in the political development of the African people. In order to appreciate this step more fully, let us briefly review the forerunners of the All African Convention.

The end of the last century brought to a close one phase of the struggle of the African people. It had been a struggle waged in military form against conquest by what was then the invader. It had been a struggle in defence of land. The beginning of the twentieth century opened up a new phase of struggle-a political form of struggle. The people had been conquered;the land had been taken;the Europeans had come to settle and had become part of the population of South Africa. They had become the rulers of the country. They imposed their own laws, their way of living, their mode of production of the means of subsistence. In fact, they organised the whole system of society in accordance with their own mode of existence. The African became willy-nilly a part of this system. It was to him an entirely new system in which he had to find his bearings. His whole mode of living was radically altered. The new system imposed upon him entirely new ways of earning a livelihood;money-economy replaced barter;labour on white farms, in mines and towns replaced the tending of cattle and the tilling of his own fields. Individual ownership even of land replaced communal ownership. The attitudes and relationship between man and man, between family and family, were altered. It was now each man for himself. In short, the impact of the new system undermined the whole social structure of the Africans and broke up the tribal organisation and relationships.

The African had to learn new relationships and new con­cepts. Plunged into this new setting he had to evolve new ways and forms of struggle-the political struggle. The first manifestation of the new form of struggle was the formation of the earliest African political organisations such as "Imbumba ya Manyama "(or "Imbumba ye Zizwe") and the "South African Native Convention "(or "Ingqungquthela ye Zizwe") , and others in the Northern provinces. These were not organisations in the modern sense of the word. Each seems to have been more a grouping of people round a particular man, a personality who attracted a following. The outstanding feature of the organisations-as their names suggest-was that they were of a federal nature, federating tribes and not organisations. The tribal system-be it remembered-was by this time already shaken to its foundations. At this stage the "natural "head of the tribe, the chief, could no longer be the rallying point in the new form of struggle. Some individuals had acquired education and were conscious of the need to organise all the people. But, in spite of the disintegrating forces, the people still tenaciously clung to the tribal divisions. Any organisation tended to be based on tribes;hence the first political groupings were in the nature of federations of tribes.

But these, in the nature of things, could not last. Tribal antagonisms soon asserted themselves and split the organisations. At the same time the tribal organisation itself was being further disrupted by the developing industrial forces in the new society. Under such conditions the breaking up of this form of political organisation was inevitable. The normal progress of the African under the new civilization rendered those organisations outmoded.

The Birth of the African National Congress

The insufficiency of land and the consequent hardship and starvation had forced large numbers of Africans to find work on the mines, where they stayed for a longer or shorter period. Still larger numbers migrated to the white farms and into the towns. Uprooted from the soil, many of these never returned and a new generation grew up which knew nothing of the old tribal way of life and had no contact with it. This was the experience, not of one tribe or another tribe, but of a whole people. And this precipitation into new modes of living dictated new modes of thought. Common experiences, common hardships and sufferings led to the dawning of a new consciousness, the realisation that all of them, irrespective of what tribe they came from, shared a common oppression.

With the Act of Union in 1910 the whole Black population became political outcasts and helots in the land of their birth, and their economic servitude was thereby ensured, African leaders from the four Provinces had come together and sent a deputation to England. They had great faith in the justice of the Parliament of the great White Queen. They came back empty-handed;they had been told that it was a domestic matter between themselves and the Government in South Africa.

It was in this setting that in 1912, the African National Congress(ANC) was born. It was the first important organisation to be built on the model of European organisations, with an individual basis of membership. It was, moreover, to unite all Africans in the four Provinces of the Union. It was a progressive step, i.e., Congress was progressive as compared with the past. It ushered in a new outlook more in keeping with the times and therefore deserved the support of all progressives. But, though in form the Congress had broken with the past, this did not mean that it had completely shed the tribalist outlook. It could not be otherwise, for an organisation is the product of its time. It must be borne in mind that there is always a time-lag between new conditions of existence and the ideas which spring out of them. Attitudes and ideas formed as a result of generations-or even centuries-of a particular mode of existence tend to persist with great tenacity long after the material basis for them has been removed. Nevertheless, with respect to the past, the formation of the African National Congress was a progressive step. It represented a step forward from the tribal organisations.

The following year (1913) the disastrous Native Land Actturned the eyes of the people to the new political organisation, the African National Congress. The Act prohibited the farmers from keeping what were known as "squatters."This meant that thousands of African families had either to sell their stock to the farmers and hire themselves as labourers or they had to clear out with their Stocks. Now they had lived as squatters on European land for generations;they knew no other means of livelihood besides tilling the land. Their wealth was in their cattle and some had fairly large stocks, for cattle were never sold. In point of fact, this ruthless Land Act gave them no choice of action. If they kept their stock they would have to find land in which to settle. But under the old Republican law in the Free State and the Transvaal, Africans were not allowed to buy land. In the Reserves, where they had a nominal right to buy, there was already so much overcrowding that there was not enough land even for those who were officially "settled"there, The white farmers, realising that the Africans had nowhere to go, ruthlessly exploited the situation and offered scandalously low prices for the cattle. At first the Africans refused to sell. With a desperate hope they began to move with their stock, each one hoping that the next farmer would permit him to stay on the old terms. In vain. A great exodus began. Thousands of Afri­cans with their numerous stocks filled the roads of the Transvaal and the Free State. As if the rulers had enlisted the very elements to ensure the catastrophic effects of their plans, the bitter cold and rain of the winter months decimated their flocks. For miles on end the roads were strewn with dead and dying cattle, sheep and goats. Old men and women and babies in arms succumbed to the privations of that pitiless journey in search of a home. They were not allowed to turn off from the highways, not even to bury their dead. It is a grim picture which Sol Plaatje, an eye-witness, has movingly described in his book: "Native Life in South Africa."There was nothing left for this harried, homeless people but to let the farmers confiscate their remaining cattle for a song and hire themselves out as labourers. Thus did the Africans have a bitter foretaste of things to come in this, the first Act passed after the Union of the four provinces -the amalgamation of British Imperialism with Dutch Feudalism.

What did Congress do in face of the 1913 Land Act? It met and decided to send a deputation to England to ask the British Government to intervene on behalf of the African people as loyal subjects of the British crown. As before, the deputation proved utterly futile. They were told to go back and plead their cause before the local tyrants. With sublime faith the leaders turned to the local liberals, for were these liberals not the sacred link with the great White Queen? They pleaded for their assistance, despite the fact that it was the liberals who made the passing of the Land Act possible. In fact it was that arch-liberal, Sauer himself, who had piloted the Bill through Parliament.

The very next year, 1914, the First World War broke out. It was known as "the war to end wars", "the war of liberation."The Africans saw no sign of liberation in their own country. On the contrary, they saw themselves being stripped bare of even the meagre political rights they had had and now denied even the right to buy land. And still, in spite of past experiences, they argued that if they showed their loyalty, perhaps Britain would reward them with some measure of liberation. They joined up. Many died on the fields of France, others were swallowed by the bottomless sea in the sinking of the ship "Mendi. "All this sacrifice-for what?

Birth of the I.C.U.

While this gesture of loyalty was being made, the African National Congress was growing rapidly. All over the country the people were agitated. Oppression was marching steadily on. The African was now realising the twofold nature of his oppression: he was not only oppressed as a member of a conquered race but he was also exploited as a worker. He had to find means of defending himself against his employers. In 1919 the Industrial and Commercial Workers' Union (ICU)was born. A strike for increased wages at the Cape Town docks, involving. 8,000 workers, was successfully carried out. This gave them encouragement, for they had discovered that by coming together they had forged an effective weapon of self-defence. The I.C.U. grew by leaps and bounds, spreading to the north, so that by 1926 it could boast of a membership of more than 100,000. The movement stirred the imagination of the people and inspired tremendous enthusiasm and devotion. Without precisely defining its organisational form or its political tasks, it made an appeal to the Africans to join it as members of an oppressed nationality. In this respect it was encroaching on what the African National Congress had hitherto regarded as its special field. A violent competition set in between the two organisations. The I.C.U., claiming to attend both to the imme­diate daily problems of industrial dispute and at the same time to the wider political issues, eclipsed the older organisation. Moreover, it was young and virile;it embarked on strikes, many of which were successful. The Government resorted to violence and there were clashes with the police.

It was in January 1919, in Cape Town, that the I.C.U. had been founded. In April, one of its organisers was arrested in Bloemfontein. In July 1920, the Africans held their first Labour Convention in Bloemfontein. In October of the same year Masabalala was arrested in Port Elizabeth for demanding higher wages. His followers asked for his release, and when it was refused they marched to the jail, whereupon the police opened fire on the crowd, killing 23 people and injuring many others. All these events show that there was a ferment among the people and that their discontent was making them bold. In the previous year, the African National Congress had persuaded the people to burn their passes in Johannesburg.

In turn, the Government under Smuts dealt ruthless blows. In 1921 there was the notorious Bullhoek incidentwhen machine guns were used to mow down defenceless people congregated near Queenstown. Then in 1922 came the Bondelswart massacre. These shootings, together with the still further extension of repressive legislation, the Urban Areas Act (1923 ), the Colour Bar Act , the Native Administration Act, seemed to add fuel to the fire.

Among the nameless thousands who rallied all over the coun­try at the call of the I.C.U. many gave their lives. In their struggles we are reminded of the heroism of their forbears in the battles of nearly a hundred years before. At that time, wave after wave of men armed only with assegai and shield had braved the onslaughts of the enemy's cannon. And now, alas, the battle was again an unequal one. The African workers found themselves up against not only their immediate employers, but a whole State, with a well-organised State machinery. Against them .was ranged a well-constituted Government backed by British Imperialism which had behind it a long history of colonial oppression and exploitation, and which was well-versed in the art of combining force with the deception of the people.

But the African workers were inexperienced in the industrial struggle. They had just recently realised the double nature of their oppression, racial as well as economic. They were only then painfully evolving a means of self-defence against exploitation. They had no clear idea on the form of organisation itself and much less had they clarity on their political objective. In a word, they were politically and theoretically unarmed. The African people had to pay very dearly for their knowledge.

The I.C.U. reached its peak towards the end of the twenties and thereafter began rapidly to decline. The organisation broke into splinters each with its rival leader. Without apportioning blame to this or that leader, however much their behaviour hastened the process of disintegration, it is necessary to realise that the I.C.U. carried within itself the germ of its own decay. There is no doubt that the bureaucratic methods of the leadership crippled the organisation. A whole army of opportunists and careerists played havoc with the movement. Nevertheless, we must not lose sight of the fact that the very nature of the I.C.U. led to its decline.

The I.C.U. was meant to be a trade union, but the African people did not know what a trade union should look like. All they knew was that it was an organisation of workers and so they set out to organise all the African workers. But as the whole African Population was oppressed, they made an appeal to everybody to come into a single, loosely-constructed, allembracing union. Industrial workers, farm labourers and domestic servants, etc., were all included without distinction. The I.C.U. held out great promises and hopes for all. As a measure of the impression it made on the minds of the people, we may cite the fact that in the remote parts of the country some farm labourers trekked from the White farms in search of the mythical land which they believed the I.C.U. would be able to give them. The I.C.U. could not possibly fulfil those hopes. While it held itself up as a champion of the workers' cause, at the same time it made its appeal to the Africans as an oppressed race, and in this sense it became neither fish nor fowl. It was neither a trade union nor a political organisation. The African had to learn that the weapon he had forged belonged to the day of the advent of Capitalism, the days preceding trade unionism in Europe. He would have to find modern weapons to fight his modern enemy. Today he has forged such weapons, as the African trade unions in Johannesburg testify. These unions are organised on the same lines as any other trade unions in the world. The I.C.U. failed, as it had to do. The normal development of the people in the process of adjusting themselves to modern conditions had to usher it off the stage.

But our characterisation of the I.C.U. must not be taken to mean that trade unions must not participate in politics. On the contrary, it is our firm belief that the main reason why the African trade unions today are moribund is precisely that they have persistently held aloof from the political struggle of the oppressed peoples of South Africa.

African Trade Unions

The present-day African trade unions are the natural successors to the I.C.U. They represent the present stage of the development of the African people who have now become fully conversant with the relationships in the industrial set-up. They have become part and parcel of the capitalist system and share its outlook and modes of thinking. The first African trade unions were formed in the late twenties (c. 1927) when the I.C.U. was at its peak. We may observe here how in the process of development one thing grows out of another and, exists along­side it. There is no abrupt transition from one to the other, no gap of time between one and another. It is more true to say that out of the womb of one thing (or one system) is born the other which will one day replace it.

The desire of the African workers to defend themselves against exploitation had given rise to a clumsy, undefined, all-embracing structure, the I.C.U. This attempt corresponded to the undefined nature of their own position as members of an oppressed people (mainly landless peasantry) harnessed to the industrial machine of the new society. Yet, willy-nilly, the very nature of the industrial forces, with the relationships involved, directed them to the necessity of forming an organisation for the purpose of defending themselves against their employers. They were concerned with their day-to-day problems as workers: with their conditions of work, their hours of labour and their wages. These are the specific tasks of a Trade Union. And as the conditions in each industry, trade or craft are different, each one requires special attention. Thus each trade or industry requires a separate organisation. This specialised type of organisation had to replace the I.C.U. with its amorphous structure. In this way the Trade Union movement was a progressive step as compared with the I.C.U.

Politics and the Trade Union Movement

The realisation by the African people that they were doubly oppressed-as workers, and as members of an oppressed race- was a fundamental one. And the formation of the I.C.U. had given expression to this basic fact. But up to this day the problem of the dual nature of oppression has not been tackled in the proper way, in spite of the fact that the Africans evolved Trade Unions. It is precisely the dual nature of oppression which the Trade Unions today have lost sight of. While the I.C.U. reacted to this duality by making general, national, political demands and failing to come to grips with the specific tasks as between worker and employer, the Trade Unions on the other hand have become preoccupied with their specialised tasks and completely ignored the general political struggles of the African people as a whole.

Yet it is essential to realise that at this stage the political struggle and the trade union struggle are inextricably bound together. Racial oppression is a part of economic exploitation and reinforces it. Stripped of every vestige of political rights, the oppressed people of South Africa cannot fight exploitation in all its forms. Without political power outside the Trade Unions, they are helpless. In fact, political and industrial laws- the Colour Bar Act, the Apprenticeship Act, the Industrial Conciliation Act, the Amendment to the Factory Act-all these tie a rope round the necks of all Non-Europeans.

Furthermore, they drive a wedge between the European and the Non-European workers with the result that they are blinded to their common interests. In other words, without political equality it will never be possible to speak of working-class unity;and without working-class unity it will never be possible to fight exploitation.

Since, therefore, he is denied even the rights of a worker, the very act of forming a Trade Union is for the African apolitical one, so that he cannot do other than participate in the political struggle. To put it another way, the Trade Union question in South Africa presents itself primarily as a national (political) question and only secondarily as a class question. The second cannot be solved independently of the first.

It is clear from what has been said that the present Trade Union leaders are not capable of measuring up to the tasks facing the Trade Unions amongst the oppressed Non-Europeans today. They have first of all to orientate themselves to the idea that their struggle is part of a national struggle. Even in their approach to the specific problems of low wages. Segregation in industry, the "uncivilised labour"policy, the exclusion of Africans from unemployment benefits, their exclusion from the provisions of the Industrial Conciliation Act, they have to realise that all these are essentially political questions. They are the warp and woof of the national struggle of the racially oppressed Non-Europeans.

The present attitude of the Trade Union leaders of divorcing the Trade Unions from politics, dooms the Trade Union movement to futility. It is criminal for them to take up the slogan of the White bureaucrats: "No Politics in the Trade Unions."Such a slogan is designed to render the Non-Europeans defence­less and prostrate before the oppressors. It is tantamount to a renunciation of the Trade Union movement among the Non-Europeans. More than that, these henchmen and agents of the ruling-class amongst the Non-European workers are guilty of the greatest irresponsibility. For they are holding back the national liberatory movement itself. The only way to revitalise this now moribund Trade Union movement is to plant it squarely in the midst of the national struggle for liberation.

Organisations on an individual basis

At the beginning of the thirties the two main organisations of the African people, the African National Congress and the I.C.U., had declined to such an extent that, by 1935 at the time of the Hertzog Bills, they were each little more than an empty shell. Only the echo of their names remained in the memories of the people in whom they had once stirred such high hopes.

Meantime, however, a certain development had been quietly taking place. The African people had been absorbed into the capitalist system with its particular attitudes and modes of thought. Besides those who were employed on the White farms as labourers, a large number had settled in the towns as unskilled workers in different trades and industries;These constituted the working-class. In the field of education, progress had taken place despite tremendous odds, and an appreciable number obtained employment in the teaching profession and the ministry, while some few had subordinate positions as clerks and interpreters in segregatory institutions, such as the Bunga and in location-superintendent offices, etc. Those professions which made it possible for educated Africans to earn an independent livelihood were significantly made inaccessible to them. In each of the various spheres open to them they found themselves up against their immediate exploiters, be it the employer in industry or in the department of education, the school-manager, the church-governors or the municipal council. Against each of these they found the need to organise and the form of organisation could not but be on an individual basis. For in the system of private enterprise into which the Africans had been absorbed, this was the characteristic form of organisation. It can be said that individualism is the essence of the capitalist outlook.

In this period, then, a number of organisations sprang up all over the country and all of them were on an individual basis of membership. There were political organisations, professional organisations, trade unions and civic bodies, religious organisations, etc. All of them had one purpose, the fight for liberation. Yet each organisation operated in isolation from the rest. In other words, the struggle was uncoordinated, ineffectual, and resulted in a dissipation of energy. Mutual suspicion and rivalry between the organisations aggravated the position.