Why the "Compromise"?
What is the explanation of the wholesale reversal on the part of the leaders? It is not enough to say that they "sold out". This is a too superficial way of stating the matter. And it does not get us anywhere. The real question still remains: why was it possible for a whole leadership to accept the Hertzog Bills? More than this. How was it possible that they could run out on the 1935 decisions of Convention and flout the expressed wishes of the people and yet get away with it, without bringing down on their heads the condemnation of the African people?
To answer these questions is our main concern at this point. Our purpose is not to apportion blame to this or that individual or organisation. We are going into these matters in order to see clearly what the mistake was, its nature and especially its causes. The Africans have paid dearly for these mistakes and it would be an act of irresponsibility to gloss over them. In a struggle, which involves the very survival of a people, it would be criminal not to pause, take stock, assess the situation and learn from the errors of the past in order to arm ourselves the better for the future.
An analysis of the situation leads us to the fact that the reasons for the "Compromise"are inherent in the past developÂment of the people. It may help us to visualise the political structure as a pyramid where the masses constitute the broad base;above them are the intellectuals, and above that again are the liberals, while the Herrenvolk party leaders constitute the apex of the structure. In other words, the failure of the Africans to put up a resistance in 1936 lay in the fact that the real control of the leadership was in the hands of Hertzog - Smuts.
Let us examine the situation under three heads:
(a) the relationship between the African leaders and the liberals;
(b) the relationship between the liberals and the rest of the herrenvolk;
(c) the relationship between the African leaders and the people.
a The Liberals and the African Leaders
Ever since the military conquest of South Africa the liberals have played a consistent role in furthering the subjugation of the people. For a very long time this role was never understood by the oppressed. On the contrary, they embraced as their champions and friends these very agents of British imperialism. The explanation of tips is to be found in the history of South Africa, in the struggles between Dutch feudalism and English capitalism. The Dutch represented a backward, outdated and reactionary "system of society with its attendant social and economic relationships. They represented a shut-in, circumscribed mode of existence and a primitive mode of production, with a complete lack of a progressive economy capable of expansion leading to a growth of towns, industry and commerce. In short, they represented the dark forces of the Middle Ages, with the serf or slave tied permanently to the land and denied the possibility of education. The English, on the other hand, had come from a country where capitalism had already been established and they brought with them to South Africa the particular mode of existence and economy as well as the ideas that belong to that system. Historically, they represented the forces of progress as compared with feudalism. The liberal slogans of "freedom"and "equality"were the ideological weapons with which, already in Europe, they had broken the shackles of an outworn economic system, feudalism, and cleared the way for the freedom of capital and the operation of new industrial forces.
In South Africa in the 19th century these two economic systems, Dutch feudalism and English capitalism, were necesÂsarily in opposition. It was a conflict into which the African, willy-nilly, was drawn, without realising that he was merely a pawn in the game. In the latter part of the 19th century he invariably supported the English rather than the Dutch. What he did not realise was that the English were actuated by the dictates of purely objective circumstances and not by any subjective feelings of good-will towards him. The new forces of capitalism demanded a different foam of labour from feudalism;it demanded a wage-labourer who would sell his labour instead of a serf or slave who was tied to the land, and a master. This seemed to the African to open up possibilities of freedom and individual enterprise denied to him under feudalism. Captalism, moreover, with its expanding economy giving rise to the growth of industry and commerce, required a body of literate workers. It was therefore essential in the interests of capitalism to foster education to a certain extent, while to the feudalist an educated serf was anathema since he was a threat to the rigid and static system of feudalism. Here again the representatives of British imperialism appeared to the Africans in a progressive light and in so far as the liberals brought them education they appeared as their friends and the champions of their rights. Here again the Africans confused the objective demands of the capitalist system with a supposed will-to-good on the part of the liberals. They translated the clash between two economic systems as evidence of an inherent difference in attitudes towards the Africans, as an intrinsic difference in moral principles between Dutch and English. They failed to realise that the good things they associated with the liberals had nothing whatever to do with moral principle or the humanitarian will-to-good. Actually the liberals themselves were obeying the dictates of the objective forces of capitalism. And it was this that the Africans failed to understand. In the same way-as we have already indicated- they misunderstood the nature of the old Cape Liberalism, that is, the dictates of political expediency which lay behind the defence of the African vote.
It is not surprising, therefore, that the Africans came to place reliance on the liberals. When they heard them expoundÂing liberal sentiments with such zest, they reposed their faith in them. They saw an identity between their own aspirations and the aims of the liberals. In their minds they appeared to be their spokesman. As a result of this mistaken identity, when the Africans began to take their first tentative political steps they looked to the liberals for guidance. They received all their politiÂcal training from them.
Here lay the roots of the great influence, which the liberals had over them and which operated as an intellectual strangleÂhold upon the whole educated section of the African people. Here is the very crux of the weakness in all their political activity. The failure to place the liberal where he belonged, namely, to the ruling-class, prevented them from severing the umbilical cord, which bound them to him, and pursuing an independent course with a single mind, free from the influences of in enemy class.
b The Liberals and the Rest of the Herrenvolk
While the African people regard the liberals as their friends and spokesmen, the liberals, on the other hand, know quite well where they belong, where their interests and therefore their allegiance must lie. They are conscious of their role in society, and what is more, the herrenvolk as a whole is fully aware of their function and their usefulness. Although they may not belong officially to any of the herrenvolk parties, they nevertheless play a definite political role. There is a tacit understanding amongst the herrenvolk that when the liberals protest very loudly, their opposition has certain clearly defined limits. It will never endanger the interests of the ruling-class as a whole. Their protestations will be carried out in such a way as will not at any time threaten the fundamental relationship of White trustee and Black ward .
When we want to ascertain where the liberals belong, whether on the side of the oppressor or the oppressed, we have only to ask a simple question: what are their economic interests? For it is this that determines a man's political outlook;All the rulers are agreed on one fundamental point, the exploitation of the Black man, as the producer of their wealth. There is a clear dividing line between exploiter and exploited, oppressor and oppressed and the interests of these two camps stand in irreconÂcilable opposition. The former must seek to oppress in conformÂity with their economic interests while the latter strive to liberate themselves.
Now on which side of the line do the liberals fall? If their interests are those of the oppressors, i.e. if they benefit from oppression, then they must belong to the opposite camp from the Non-Europeans. They are part and parcel of the herrenvolk. The Government can rest assured that in all their manifold spheres of activity-cultural, educational, humanitarian and politiÂcal-the sum total of all their activities reinforces the interests of the rulers. The ultimate effect of all their labours is to oil the wheels of exploitation. They are the great Conciliators, whose function is to reconcile the oppressed to their chains. Their task is to coin fine phrases and utter noble sentiments to cover up a grimly exploitive system.
In politics, the demands of a ruling-class are never stated openly. Nevertheless every law is the expression of one or other of their economic demands. But the politicians are always careful to cover it over with fine legal phrases and even professions of good-will. It is only when a law is put into operation that its real intention is brought home to its' victims, Even then some of them refuse to believe that its real intention was to oppress;they stubbornly hold on to the idea that the administrators of the law are misinterpreting it. For they cannot reconcile the lofty sentiments expressed during the passing of the law with the relentless experience of its operation. Every time there is a new attack in the form of a repressive law the people are thrown into confusion, dissension and division amongst themselves. In this way they are rendered helpless and delivered into the hands of the oppressor.
It is in this respect that the liberals perform an indispensable role, without which no government could so easily achieve its purpose. In other words, it is understood by the herrenvolk as a whole that the primary task of the deception of the people falls to the liberals. They know that it is not enough for the government in power to work out its plans for the exploitation of the oppressed. They have to make sure that such plans (or laws) will be made acceptable to the oppressed. This is where the liberals, the agents of the herrenvolk, step in. This is where the long-established link between the liberals and the African intellectuals becomes of paramount importance. Now they reap the fruits of the power and influence they have acquired over the African leaders, for the channels of contact have been well and truly prepared. The chain of connection from the herrenvolk party leaders through the liberals to the African leaders and thence to the people, is complete. This is what we mean when we say that the real control of the leadership of the African people lay in the hands of Hertzog-Smuts. Here is the basis for all so-called compromises. It explains what at first sight seems impossible-that the oppressed should meekly accept their chains. It is here that the full tragedy of the failure of the African leaders to sever the destructive link binding the oppressed to the oppressor becomes fully repealed. For it has acted like a cancer eating into the political body of the Africans and has nullified all their efforts.
c African Leaders and the people
Our understanding of how the 1936 "Compromise "took place Is further illuminated when we consider the relationship between the African leaders and the masses. At the same time we can better understand the reason why it was possible for the leaders to flout the expressed wishes of the people without incurring their condemnation.
First of all as to the general character of the intellectual, the section from which the leaders invariably stem. They constitute a very small section of the oppressed masses. The social position of the African intellectual is an extremely precarious one. While he suffers the disabilities of his brothers in oppression, he has some few privileges which appear very precious to him. He clings to them all the more tenaciously because of the deprivations and humiliations suffered by his more unfortunate fellow-men. He usually depends on government employment for a livelihood and he is the less likely to risk losing his job since this involves not only loss of livelihood but also loss of social status and those privileges which only just save him from the jackboot of the mine-boss, the rigours of the pass system and the sjambok of the farmer.
These precarious conditions of his existence have a profound effect on his behaviour and his whole mode of thinking. They tend to make intellectual courage and single-mindedness difficult for him.
Now it is true to say that everywhere in the world the intellectuals as a group occupy an intermediary position between the working-class and the employing-class. It is a small group, which is incapable of playing an independent role, and its memÂbers must attach themselves to either one or other of the two fundamental and opposing classes in society. The contradictions of such a position make them prone to vacillation and indecision. At various periods in history when the conflict between the two classes has reached a crisis, they have always attached themselves to whichever was the stronger force at the time. They can act boldly and decisively only when they are assured of a strong force behind them.
The difficulties and contradictions that face an intellectual in general apply to the African intellectual to a much greater degree. As a member of an oppressed race he is regarded by the ruling-class as an alien (enemy) while he is at the same time separated in many various ways from the rest of the oppressed. His, isolation is complete, with all its disastrous implications. When faced with the necessity to act, he first looks round to size up the strength of the masses. He asks himself if it will be safe for him to throw in his lot with them, for he is afraid to burn his boats. He is invariably seized with pessimism because he always under-estimates the power of the masses in a crisis.
Altogether, his position is a difficult one. He finds himself between the upper and the nether millstone. On the one hand his "friends"and political mentors, the liberals, look to him to do nothing to upset the "happy race relations"on which they set so much store. On the other hand, the people look to him to be their leader and spokesman. As an educated man he enjoys great prestige amongst them. Being themselves inarticulate as a result of their illiteracy, they regard him as the best man to express their needs and aspirations. At every political crisis he is faced with this problem of dual allegiance, and, unable to resolve this contradiction, he takes the line of least resistance.
Then he is compelled to resort to ambiguity and equivocation in word and deed. We use the word "compelled "advisedly, because as long as he is tied to the enemy class he robs himself of independent thinking and thence of freedom of action. His training under the liberals reinforces these tendencies arising from his precarious position. For it is the very essence of liberalism to extol the virtues of progress by gradualness, sweet reasonableness, restraint, patience and dignity.
Now, because he is an intellectual, he has to rationalise his actions to himself and justify his course to the people in whose eyes he must maintain his prestige. What has since become a classical example will illustrate what we mean. We refer to the situation, which arose over the boycott of the elections in recent years. By the middle of the forties the people had reached a stage of bitter disillusionment in the Slave Acts of 1936. Day to day experience had brought home to them the full force of these Acts. When, therefore, the All African Convention in its Statement "Along the New Road ", came out with a call to boycott the elections the people rallied to the call because it answered their needs. But a boycott of the election of Members of the Native Representative Council (M.R.C's.) and the so-called "Native Representatives"in Parliament meant a sharp break with the liberals and their policy. A section of the intellectuals could not countenance this. And the arguments they used against the Boycott are a striking example of the inexorable logic of a false position;they demonstrate the depths to which one is reduced under the necessity to rationalise one's actions.
This section of the intellectuals, headed by the M.R.C's., argued that the people were not ready for a boycott and maintained that they had still to be educated to it-and all this in face of the people's emphatic rejection of dummy elections. As the day of the elections approached these intellectuals waxed more and more voluble in a frantic attempt to dissuade the people from their course. They could not openly condemn the boycott movement, since to do so would have meant taking an open stand with the enemy against the people, and thus exposing themselves and incurring a complete loss of prestige, so they resorted to verbal contortions and equivocations in order to sow confusion and thus destroy the boycott movement. They coined the ridiculous phrase: "Boycott candidates"-as if it were possible both to boycott and take part in the elections at one and the same time. It is a meaningless contradiction in terms, but this did not seem to worry the lackeys of liberalism, nor were they concerned with the fact that sooner or later the people would discover the political trick, as long as it enabled them to proceed with the elections.
They put forward the plea that: "We should not overthrow national unity for the emotional satisfaction of boycotting elections."Both the cynicism of this argument, which identifies the grim struggle for liberation with a mere "emotional satisfaction"and the accusation against the people of "overthrowing national unity", demonstrate the sheer intellectual dishonesty to which an intellectual is driven by the logic of his false position. He who sacrifices the unity of the people (under the boycott movement) on the altar of his allegiance to the liberals, dares to accuse the people of his own crime.
Continuing with their equivocations, they prated about "putting up a heroic fight from within the Council", and "sending our best brains and our bravest souls to improve the Council."But all their specious arguments could not alter the fact that as soon as the people participated in the elections they were accepting and operating the machinery of their own oppression. No amount of verbal jugglery could remove the plain fact that to stand for election and to vote for the councillors, was to break the boycott. To crown it all they found it possible to describe this mambo-Jumbo as the acme of political realism and statesmanship. In truth they had learned the language and methods of the liberals very well.
We have said that the reason for the acceptance of the "Compromise"and the failure of the African people to put up a struggle in 1936 lay in the past history of the people. We have shown the link between the African intellectuals and the liberals, which prevented them from taking an independent course. But our analysis of the situation is not complete unless we look into the nature of the relationship between the intellectuals and the people.
The masses, as we have said, looked to the intellectuals to be their leaders and spokesmen. They had long been accustomed to giving their allegiance to this or that particular leader because of his personality and prestige. Even when they joined an organisation they usually did so because their particular heroes were in it. They were never taught to discriminate between organisations according to the principles for which they stood and the policy which they advocated. Consequently the organisations themselves did not find it necessary to define precisely their principles and their policies. This was an inherent weakness the dangers of which only a crisis would fully reveal.
In the absence of clearly-defined principles, the dangers were many and varied. Firstly, it placed no check on the leaders and gave free scope for opportunism, that enemy of principle without which a sustained struggle is impossible, that canker which has infected the political activity of the Africans and taken such heavy toll of our organisations in the past. Secondly, the people themselves, lacking a guiding principle, had no clear directives for action and no touchstone with which to measure and correctly assess the political actions of their leaders.
It is not surprising that it was difficult for the people to have a political measuring-rod, when the leaders themselves were untaught and untrained to these necessities. Before the leaders could communicate these qualities to the masses they themselves had to break with the liberals and free themselves from their intellectual stranglehold. For proper leadership presupposes independence of thought and clarity of vision as well as intellectual integrity and moral courage. Under such conditions the people were exposed to pressures from an enemy class, to influences now from one section of the herrenvolk and now from another.
Here, then, can be seen all the elements which made the 1936 "Compromise"possible. We have taken some pains to go into the matter very thoroughly because of the seriousness of its results for a whole people. It cannot be too strongly stressed that on our ability to assess and learn from the mistakes of the past depends our proper conducting of the struggle in the future.
The Compromise
The actual events of the Compromise period of 1936 are briefly told. The publication of the three "Native Bills"had created a stir in the country. In order to allay the fears of the tribal sections of the African population and thus split them off from the general body of protest, the Government held secret meetings of chiefs, showing them maps in which the promised land was marked off. The plan did not work because many of the chiefs discovered that the "promised land"was in fact already occupied by them. Protests spread throughput the length and breadth of the country.
The liberals swelled the volume of protest and none expostuÂlated more loudly than they did. By their loud protestations they drew attention to themselves and succeeded in putting themselves at the head of the agitation. This was the first step in the train of events. When the African leaders arrived with the 1935 Resolutions of the Convention rejecting the Bills, the liberals got busy interviewing Cabinet Ministers and negotiations went on fast and furious. The stage was now set for the next move.
The Compromise was announced in all the herrenvolk Press.
But still the liberals carried on with their loud protestations. The Bills went through Parliament. Then immediately after the passing of the Bills, Hertzog made his famous speech in which he warned those elements in the White group who were in the heat of protest that they were playing with fire. It was a speech delivered from the rostrum of Parliament, but addressed to the country, particularly to the liberals.
Hertzog warned that, without the co-operation of the African people themselves, these Acts would be as dead as if they had never passed through the third reading of Parliament. He knew that for the first time the Parliament of South Africa had passed drastic measures against the Africans without having any means of enforcing them. He was fully alive to the dangers of the position. There was no law compelling the people to vote if they did not want to. The working of the Acts, particularly the "Native Representation "Act, depended on the voluntary co-operation of the people. If they refused to vote, the whole system of fraudulent representation and dummy councils would be killed before it was born. In other words the people could defy this Act without the Government being able to take legal reprisals. It was not simply that the herrenvolk feared that the people would succeed in defeating this particular Act. It was even more than this. The great danger they feared lay in the fact that by thus opposing the Act the Africans would discover that most powerful instrument of resistance, the boycott-a weapon whose use could be extended and effectively applied in all other spheres of political struggle. It was a contingency strenuously to be avoided. It was this dangerous possibility, which Hertzog had in mind when he issued his warning to his fellow-herrenvolk.
The liberals now took the cue. As vehemently as they had protested against the Bills, so now did they plead strenuously for the acceptance of the Acts. The great conciliators were in full swing. They coined the phrase: "Half-a-loaf is better than no bread."Their advice was couched in those trite phrases;"Give the Acts a trial,"and "Make the best of a bad job."The African leaders, true to the tradition of placing reliance on the liberals, followed them even now. From this time on they turned their backs on the people's decisions made at the 1935 Convention. They went out to take part in the elections instituted by the Acts. Some competed for positions in the Native Representative Council while others vied with one another in their support of the various White "Native Representative"candidates. An election atmosphere was created and whipped up by the herrenvolk press. The leaders worked themselves up to fever-pitch and all their energies were poured into the task of operating the Slave Acts.
Desertion of Convention
This prodigal diversion of energy was a great blow to the All African Convention-a blow that sent the once bold ship staggering into the shallows where it grounded on the rocks of political treachery. Those who should have manned it and guided it into the full sea towards its destination deserted it. If anyone had set himself the deliberate task of disrupting the unity of the African people, which had found its expression in the formation of the Convention, he could not have devised a better way. The apple of discord had been successfully thrown into their midst. When a proposal for a boycott of the "Native Representation"
Act was made in June, 1936, as the logical follow-up of the 1935 Convention Resolutions, it was thrown out. The leaders now had other ideas. After the style of the liberals they began to argue:
Let us give the Acts a trial. Let us make use of what we have in order to get what we want. They proceeded to rationalise their actions. They argued that the people were not sufficiently educated to understand the boycott, and that in any case they were more interested in the promise of land than in the loss of an already depleted franchise, and therefore they would not support a boycott.
This argument is all the more spurious when one recalls the mood of the masses at that time and the eagerness with which they had rallied to the call to resist the Bills. All that was necessary was for the leaders to get hold of the same maps that the Government had used in an attempt to deceive the masses and with them expose the fraud of the Land Act. Even the chiefs on their own had already pointed out the fraud. This exposure could have been made equally well without the maps, simply by making use of the figures of the proposed amount of Promised Land and comparing them with the size of the land already occupied by the African people. In this way it would have been easy to show that when the Land Act was put into operation there would be even less land available than there had been before the Act.
This would have been a comparatively easy task because the people themselves were already suspicious. At all events, a proper struggle along these lines would have given the leaders an opportunity of educating the people on the importance of striving for political rights, and of showing them that the land problem could not be solved without first solving the political problem. In other words, the people are suffering from land starvation because they have no political rights.
Instead of following this bold course of action the leaders hill their cowardice behind the alleged ignorance and lack of readiness of the masses. Putting the blame on the masses for their weak-kneed policy is a device that has become all too familiar.
The argument that the people were not educated to the boycott was indeed an absurd one, though its absurdity did not seem to strike these masters of prevarication. For what could have been more strange and foreign to the masses than the whole system of electoral colleges and indirect parliamentary representation, which the leaders proceeded to advocate? But they never argued that the people were not educated to this. On the contrary, they, along with the magistrates and the various Native Commissioners, took it upon themselves to go out and teach the people how to form electoral colleges and how and when to vote. In fact they did this so well that within a short space of time the whole country was caught up in a dummy-election fever it was not the first time that the leaders had misdirected the people.
The truth of the matter is that hitherto the intellectuals have been engaged in a systematic miseduction of the masses. That training which they themselves received from the herrenvolk through the liberals they have been passing on to the people without first submitting it to a critical appraisal as to what is good and what is injurious to the cause of the oppressed. It was natural enough that the people had to be taught new methods of struggle within a system of society, which was comparatively new to them. The leaders taught them the paramount importance and the uses of the franchise. This was good. And the people responded wholeheartedly. But then the leaders went on to press for the support of the Bunga system in rural areas and the corÂresponding bodies, the Advisory Boards, in the urban areas. And it is significant that the people were reluctant to follow them in this. Yet in spite of their reluctance the intellectuals carried on an intensive propaganda for many years in an attempt to popularise the Bunga system and the Advisory Boards, all of which had been created for the enslavement of the Africans. When, later, the Native Representative Council, that glorified Bunga, was introduced, it was the intellectuals almost exclusively who had an interest in it.
The masses, on the other hand, spontaneously maintained their aloofness. Not being under the direct Influence of the liberals and not being confounded by the press and radio propaganda, they always tend to fall back on their elemental reasoning. Their reactions are direct and straightforward. The daily experience of oppression predisposes them to be suspicious of anything originating from the oppressor. While this does not in itself serve as a positive guide to action it nevertheless guides them as to what to avoid. It creates an attitude of mind that makes them less susceptible to propaganda from the enemy class. They view things from a particular angle of vision, i.e. from the point of view of the oppressed only.
In this sense it can be said that, in the matter of the boycott, it is not the masses who need education so much as the leaders. That is why it is so preposterous for the leaders to accuse the people of not being ready for the boycott, when the whole trend of the people's elemental reasoning arising out of their experiences has only one logical outcome, namely the rejection of all government-imposed institutions-in other words, the boycott. In fact it is the people who are waiting for the errant leaders to come home. They are ready, but they have to wait until the leaders retrace their steps and join them in a united and independent struggle, free from the influences of the herrenvolk and untrammelled by a misplaced allegiance to any section of it.
With the leaders, then, diverting their energies into working the new Acts, the enthusiasm of the African people was bound in wane. The spirit of unity, which had characterised the 1935 period, received a mortal blow, the full effects of which were only later to reveal themselves. We have said that the formation of the All African Convention was the organisational expression of the enthusiasm and determination engendered in the people by the announcement of the Bills. The momentum of this enthusiasm carried it to 1937 when the Draft Constitution constituting the All African Convention as a permanent body, was formally ratified in the midst of speeches, which still breathed the spirit of unity. Now it often happens that a political act takes some time before it bears its evil fruit. The "Compromise"of 1936 was of this nature, and it was not until after 1937 that its bitter harvest began to be reaped. National unity had received a shattering blow.
After the furious activity of the first elections under the Native Representation Act, confusion reigned and apathy set in. A blight fell on the political arena and Convention entered a period of decline. The leaders had not only flouted the 1935 decisions of Convention, but many of them also began to desert Convention itself. They went their various ways, pursuing their own individual and petty organisational interests. Gone was the spirit of national unity which had been the motivating power carrying the people to the highest peak of political consciousness mid the maximum organisational unity-a power which had swept aside all petty bickerings, petty organisational rivalries and preÂoccupations, a power which had welded together not only the hitherto rival leaders but also the whole leadership together with the masses.