Chapter 2 - Industrialisation and the Revitalisation of Black Politics in the 1940s

Three documents, fundamental changes that took place in black protest politics and African nationalist thinking during the 1940s, particularly in the African National Congress (ANC). Though one should be wary of imposing artificial periodisations such as decades and centuries on historical developments, in a very real sense the 1940s was a time of regeneration for African politics. It was a watershed separating the inertia and decline of the 1930s from the populism and mass politics of the 1950s.

The first document is a description of the ANC's 1937 conference written by Ralph Bunche, an astute observer. He justifiably depicts the ANC as disorganised and politically bankrupt. What emerges forcefully from Bunche's description is the ANC's stress on moderation and middle-class respectability as well as its servility toward whites in authority. The ANC had by this time been in severe decline for the better part of a decade and was effectively non-functional.

The second document is an ANC report of its delegation to the Minister of Justice in July 1941. At this time, the ANC was being reorganised into a more effective body under the leadership of Dr Alfred Xuma, a medical doctor who had been elected president of the ANC in 1940. Though still decidedly moderate in tone and respectful of white authority, the document demonstrates political initiative on the part of the ANC and shows that popular grievances were starting to be addressed. The deputation, a key method through which the ANC sought redress prior to the 1950s, spoke of an approach to politics that was conservative, elitist and prepared to operate within limits set by the white supremacist state.

The third document, the Programme of Action, was adopted as official ANC policy at its 1949 conference. It marks a turning point in both the history of the ANC and of black politics as a whole. This document rejectsany form of white privilege, asserts the desire of African people for “national freedom” and demands full political representation for African people. Its tone is decidedly Africanist as opposed to the multi-racialism that was to characterise ANC policy from the 1950s onwards. The emphasis on the need for economic, educational and cultural advancement indicates that it saw the struggle as broader than merely winning political rights. And very significantly, for the first time the ANC advocated the use of illegal tactics and civil disobedience.

Several questions arise from this brief analysis of these documents. Firstly, why did African politics experience fundamental transformation at this time? Secondly, where did the revival of the 1940s come from? A short answer to both questions is that these changes arose from a structural shift in the South African economy and society during the late 1930s and 1940s, which in turn manifested itself in the political arena. Its impact is clearly visible in the ANC, which shifted from the moderate and elitist politics of polite delegations and patient petitioning to the mass struggles, defiance and political activism that characterised the 1950s.

As will be demonstrated in this chapter, one cannot fully understand political change of this nature without reference to the underlying social processes that shaped them. To focus simply on the political events themselves would be to gain only a superficial understanding, not only of this particular development but also of politics and human society in general.

Fernand Braudel, recognised as one of the most influential historians of modern times, described events as mere “surface disturbances, crests of foam that the tides of history carry on their strong backs”. However, before discussing the broader social forces that moulded these political changes, we need to establish the nature of African politics before the revival of the 1940s.

What was the nature of African politics before the 1940s?

The history of black politics shows that the latter half of the 1920s was a high point in black resistance. Both the Industrial and Commercial Workers’ Union (ICU) and the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA) organised mass protests, pass burning campaigns, trade union activity and strikes.

The African National Congress was also politically active during this period despite being hampered by a growing rift between a majority moderate grouping and a minority radical faction within its ranks.

By the early 1930s, however, the ICU had been destroyed by corruption, mismanagement, internal conflict and state repression. The Communist Party was greatly weakened when ideological in-fighting led to widespread expulsions, leaving the organisation with no more than 150 members by the mid-1930s. The fledglingAfrican trade union movement, which had been growing during the 1920s, had collapsed with the onset of the Great Depression in 1929.

By the early 1930s the ANC had also retreated into internal squabbling and inactivity. Moderates within the organisation wanted to pursue the politically conservative and narrowly elitist strategy of lobbying the government for incrementalreform. The radicals, on the other hand, favoured mass action, trade unionism and co-operation with the Communist Party. The ANC had become so severely polarised by these tensions that the moderates banded together at the 1930 conference to reassert their control over the organisation. As a result, an extremely conservative executive committee was elected, arch-conservative Pixley ka Seme became president and many of its radical members were expelled.

The coming to power of these conservatives within the ANC did the organisation serious harm. Their concerns were petty and impractical, and their tenure marked by inactivity and disorganisation, as demonstrated by Bunche's commentary (see page 19).

Seme's main interests were to revive the influence of traditional chiefs in African politics and to promote money-making schemes for African businessmen, himself included. During his presidency the ANC's membership fell to below 1 000 nation-wide and most of its branches withered away. Disorganisation and the drying up of its funds meant that the ANC was no longer even able to publish its newspaper, Abantu Batho. By the mid-1930s the organisation appeared to be dead. Seme managed to cling to the presidency for much of the 1930s by packing poorly-attended annual conferences with his supporters.

The 1930s were undoubtedly a low point in organised African resistance. The main organisations were ineffective in the face of a powerful and unsympathetic state. This was a state committed to preserving white supremacy and that did not hesitate to use force to suppress black demands for political and civil rights. Through the 1930s state power was supported by strong Afrikaner nationalist sentiment and nearly total unanimity among whites about the need to suppress black protest.

Although the main revitalisation of African politics occurred in the 1940s, a turning of the tide can already be detected in the late 1930s. It can be tied to fundamental changes in South African society. By far the most important factor shaping the political environment of the 1940s was that the South African economy experienced sustained growth, especially in industrial production, during the second half of the 1930s and throughout the 1940s.

What were the causes and social consequences of rapid industrialisation from the mid-1930s onward?

When South Africa emerged from the Great Depression in the mid-1930s, its economy recovered more vigorously than other countries. This was largely due to the devaluation of the South African Pound at the end of 1932, which made South African gold mines much more profitable. Being the world’s largest gold producer, the South African economy benefited greatly and grew rapidly in the latter part of the 1930s. What is more, the outbreak of World War 2 in 1939 prolonged the boom conditions for South African industry for several years.

World War 2 affected the economy in two ways. First, military demands created a huge market for South African food, textiles, minerals, armaments and other manufactured goods. Second, the war disrupted international trade and a wide range of products that had previously been imported could now be manufactured economically in South Africa for local consumption.

These favourable conditions continued after the war, as the reconstruction of Europe and other parts of the world devastated by the fighting fuelled an international economic boom that created continued demand for South African exports. Industrial output soared throughout this period. By 1943, for the first time, manufacturing industry made a greater contribution to the South African economy than mining.

This rapid change in the late 1930s and 1940s from a predominantly mining economy to one dominated by manufacturing lies at the heart of the structural shift in South African society referred to earlier. During this period, South Africa in effect experienced a second phase in her industrial revolution. The first had occurred in the late nineteenth century; it had been based on the establishment of large-scale mining after the discovery of diamonds and gold in the southern African interior (see Turning Point 3).

One may well ask, “What does a booming economy have to do with the revitalisation of African politics?” The link between economic expansion and the resurgence of African protest politics is rapid urbanisation. Sustained growth in manufacturing output meant a massive expansion of the urban labour force. The need for African labour was stronger after 1939, when significant numbers of white men went off to fight in World War 2. At thesame time, the deepening economic impoverishment of Africans in the countryside encouraged large-scale migration into the cities. Their harsh experience of urbanisation sparked off a wave of spontaneous community protest and African working-class political action. It was very much in the wake of this rising tide of popular anger that formal African political organisation was reborn to reflect and express, at least in part, the dissatisfaction and frustration of the African populace.

South Africa’s experience in this respect was not entirely unique. Through much of Africa, the impact of World War 2 stimulated local industrial production, rapid urbanisation and popular unrest. One can point to Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, Algeria and Egypt as examples of countries where elitist nationalist movements harnessed the popular anger of this period to transform themselves into mass movements for national liberation. That most African countries achieved independence in the 1960s while South Africa did not, can to a large extent be explained by the presence here of a large settler population and their control of the state.

The rate of African urbanisation from the late 1930s through to the early 1950s was quite phenomenal, and was greater than at any other period in South African history except after the scrapping of influx control in 1986. The urban African population more than doubled from about 1,1 million in 1936 to approximately 2,5 million in 1950. In 1936 about 18% of the African population was urbanised; by 1950 nearly 30% were living in cities and towns. This was a remarkable demographic shift, especially if one takes into account that the state, with its pass system, went to extraordinary lengths to keep Africans out of the cities except as migrant workers. Indeed, in 1937 the Native Laws Amendment Act introduced an even stricter influx control system.

Part of the reason for this rapid growth in the urban population was that in the 1940s more Africans started coming to the cities as families with the intention of settling there permanently. Previously, younger males came to the cities on their own as labourers, usually on contract and intending to be no more than temporary workers. In the 1940s the urban African population took on a more permanent character. Shanty towns sprang up on the perimeters of the cities, and people tried to build stable family lives in this squalid environment.

This migration to the cities was set in motion by two independent sets of circumstances, one in the urban economy and the other in the countryside.The expansion of secondary industry in the urban areas generated employment opportunities and created an ever-greater demand for labour.This served to attract people to the cities. At the same time, conditions in the rural areas, both on white farms and in the reserves, had by the latter part of the 1930s deteriorated to the extent that large numbers of people were living in misery and some even faced starvation. This pushed people who were desperate for the basic necessities of survival out of the rural areas.

The rural African population experienced deepening poverty from the latenineteenth century onwards. As a result of colonial conquest, Africans were either pushed into marginal areas, which were later proclaimed as reserves, or were hired as cheap labour for settler farms. Many rented land from white farmers in return either for cash, labour service or part of their crop; they are generally referred to as sharecroppers.

The 1913 Natives Land Act, a key pillar in the state's segregationist policies, prevented Africans from owning land in what it proclaimed to be white areas, thus restricting 70% of the population to 8% of the land area.The Land Act also outlawed sharecropping; this forced many families, who up to that point had been able to make an independent living, either into becoming farm labourers or moving onto already crowded reserve land.Many white farmers took this opportunity to expel sharecroppers from their land, forcing thousands of African families into poverty.

The productive capacity of the reserves declined steadily as a result of the overcrowding and overgrazing of land that was marginal to begin with. By the 1940s this deterioration had progressed to the point that very few families in reserves were able to make a living off the land and were increasingly dependent on the money sent home by migrant labourers. Many of the more desperate families decided to migrate to the cities where there was at least the prospect of employment.

Although poverty in the urban areas was not as badas in the countryside, urban living conditions were nevertheless squalidand unhealthy. Housing wasparticularly poor and many people were forced to live inshack settlements with the most rudimentary provisions for water and sanitation. The authorities deliberatelyrestricted the housing available to Africans to a few small official housing estates, or locations as they were called, to discourage Africans from settling permanently in the cities.

In addition, wages were low and did not keep pace with inflation. Price increases in essentials such as maize meal and firewood were particularly steep during the war years. Most workers were unskilled and their wages were not enough to cover their families’ most basic needs. Families often depended on wives working, usually as domestics, or being involved in some form of informal economic activity. Children sometimes contributed by begging for food. People were harassed by the state and local authorities who tried to regulate their lives and deport pass-law offenders. Although one did not quite have starvation conditions in the shanty towns, there was grinding poverty and living conditions were extremely poor.

How did African working-class discontent manifest itself politically?

From these socio-economic changes and the harsh experience of urban life, there emerged two types of African working-class political action. First, there were a series of informal, spontaneous community protests on issues relating to the cost of living. Second, there were impressive achievements in trade union activity.

Community protests

The community protests were spontaneous in the sense of relying on very basic organisation by community members themselves and thus tended to be fragmented. These protests were an expression of peoples’ dissatisfaction with oppressive living conditions and the high cost of subsistence. They dealt with issues such as poor housing, high transport costs and the lack of personal freedom such as the right to be in the city, to move about freely within its precincts, to brew beer or hawk. Two examples of community struggle during the 1940s that deserve special mention are

the Alexandra bus boycotts and the squatter movements that arose on the Witwatersrand from 1944 onwards.

In Alexandra transport had always been a sensitive issue; it was some 15 kilometres from the city centre and there was no train service. The attemptin 1940 to impose a 25% increase in bus fares met strong resistance from the residents of Alexandra. They decided to boycott the bus service. Over the next five years there were occasional boycotts involving tens of thousands of people walking or cycling to work for months on end, and there were numerous negotiations over the bus fare increase. In the end, the Alexandra residents won out. The bus fare was reduced and the bus service reconstituted on a more economic basis with the help of a government subsidy.

From 1944 onwards there was a sudden mushrooming of shanty towns on open ground on the outskirts of the Witwatersrand urban complex. In Johannesburg alone there were close to 100 000 squatters within four years. Squatters were drawn from two sources. In the first instance, squatter communities originated from families, usually sub-tenants in the official townships, who moved out onto vacant land and used scraps of wood, sacking and corrugated iron to build shelters. Secondly, squatter communities were continuously supplemented by marginal and desperate families who had migrated from the countryside and who could not afford, or were not able to find, accommodation in the townships.

Squatting was a crucially important strategy for survival because it reduced the cost of subsistence by eliminating the need to pay rent, whichusually took up as much as a quarter of an unskilled worker’s wage. Whatever else it might have been, the squatter movement must also be seen as a form of African working-class resistance because squatters acted in open defiance of the law and threats from municipalities. Squatting was for many a clear statement of their dissatisfaction with existing conditions in the formal townships. An important motivation for joining a squatter community was the desire to move away from the regulation and supervision of the townships to a freer environment where people had greater control over their lives.

Trade unionism

The second form of African working-class action was to form trade unions and resort to strikes. The African trade union movement experienced a remarkable revival from the late 1930s onwards as a result of the economic upswing. Besides the grievances of African workers, this revival was also due to the organising skill of handful of white communists and liberals. Because of the weakness of African political organisations, including the ANC, they took it upon themselves to start organising African workers. From virtually no union activity in the mid-1930s, by 1940 there were about 20 unions organising approximately 25 000 workers. Five years later there were as many as 120 unions with a membership exceeding 160 000. This is a clear indication of growing class consciousnessand militancy among African

workers.

There were a large number of work stoppages throughout the 1940s, many of them being wildcat strikes. A surprising number of these strikes were successful. In an environment of high economic growth, employers were prepared to make concessions and even recognise trade unions rather than have anarchy and sabotage in the workplace.

The main development on the trade union front was the formation of a union among workers on the mines, the African Mineworkers’ Union (AMU), in 1941. The miners had serious grievances because of the harsh conditions in the compounds where they lived and because miners were paid considerably less than industrial workers. That the AMU was able to claim a membership of 25 000 within three years was a considerable achievement. The compound system placed workers under close supervision and made it very difficult to recruit them into unions.

In August 1946 the AMU called a strike in support of its demand for a minimum wage of ten shillings a day. Seventy thousand miners came out on what was by far the largest strike by black workers in South African historyto that point. The strike was ruthlessly suppressed by police action which left 12 miners dead and 1 200 wounded. There was no improvement in working conditions and the AMU itself was smashed. Despite its failure, the 1946 miners’ strike was important because it demonstrated that miners could be organised despite the controls of the compound system, and also for the galvanising effect it had on a rising generation of young political activists.

How did organised African politics change during the 1940s?

All of the broader socio-economic and political developments mentioned so far had an impact on the ANC and played a role in its regeneration. In addition, from the latter half of the 1930s the growing prevalence of racist ideologies both at home and abroad created a sense of urgency within the remaining core of the organisation that its decline needed to be stopped and reversed. Developments such as the rise of Nazismand Fascismin Europe, the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1935, the passage of the Hertzog Billsin South Africa in 1936 and the consolidation of an aggressive Afrikaner nationalist movement helped spur what remained of the organisation into action. Once the process of regeneration started, the ANC tended to be swept along by the tide of popular protest, trying to keep up with developments rather than leading from the front. It was only in the 1950s that the organisation started taking the initiative in organising popular

protest.

The first significant step in the turnaround of the ANC was the removal in 1937 of Seme as president by delegates who were fed up with his incompetence and inactivity. His successor, the Reverend Zaccheus Mahabane, a Methodist clergyman, had good intentions but achieved little. He was succeeded in 1940 by the energetic and intellectually capable Dr.Alfred Bitini Xuma. The election of Xuma as president represented a decisive break with the old, staid, conservative leadership that had led the ANC down a blind alley.

Under Xuma’s leadership, the ANC was restructured so that it became much more efficient and politically effective. After Xuma's reforms, the ANC was better able to respond to the challenges of African working-class dissatisfaction. It was the organisational changes of the early 1940s that eventually made it possible for the ANC to lead the mass protests of the 1950s. What were these reforms?

Xuma and his associates worked on a new constitution for the ANC that was implemented in 1943. The new constitution scrapped the privileged position of chiefs within the ANC, gave equal status to women members ”” which paved the way for the formation of the ANC Women’s League in 1948 - and, very importantly, centralised power in the organisation within a fivemember executive committee. This not only made planning, policy making and the execution of political strategies much more effective but also brought unruly provincial factions to heel. Much effort was put into improving the finances of the organisation, recruiting new members and rebuilding its branch structure. Xuma also hired full-time organisers and forged links with organisations such as the Communist Party and the South African Indian Congress (SAIC). Urban branches were encouraged to hold regular open-air meetings in townships. This tactic generated a significant informal following for the ANC, besides a paid-up membership that reached 6 000 by the end of the 1940s.