South Africa Belongs to Us: A History of the ANC / Edition 1 available in Paperback
South Africa Belongs to Us: A History of the ANC / Edition 1
- ISBN-10:
- 0253285917
- ISBN-13:
- 9780253285911
- Pub. Date:
- 07/22/1989
- Publisher:
- Indiana University Press
- ISBN-10:
- 0253285917
- ISBN-13:
- 9780253285911
- Pub. Date:
- 07/22/1989
- Publisher:
- Indiana University Press
South Africa Belongs to Us: A History of the ANC / Edition 1
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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780253285911 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Indiana University Press |
| Publication date: | 07/22/1989 |
| Edition description: | Annotated |
| Pages: | 258 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.30(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.80(d) |
| Age Range: | 18 Years |
Read an Excerpt
A History of the ANC South Africa Belongs to Us
By Francis Meli
Zimbabwe Publishing House and Indiana University Press
Copyright © 1988 Francis MeliAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-253-33740-5
CHAPTER 1
Sources of Inspiration
Towards the end of the nineteenth century, new social forces began to emerge in South Africa. These were African ministers of religion, school teachers, magistrates' clerks, interpreters, small traders, peasants, farmers and workers. Together with some of the traditional rulers - the chiefs - they opened up a new chapter in South African history.
The social structure of African society was by this time changing, and this had repercussions on traditional forms of organization, thinking and ideology. This was a period of widespread political expectation. An African nationalism which cut across (but did not replace) ethnic identity began to emerge. "Tribal" organization of society was being undermined and weakened by colonialism and new movements which were uniting the people began to emerge.
An examination of this period shows quite clearly that the history of South Africa developed unevenly. But one theme was common: the will to survive and defeat the forces of colonialism. This was the root of African nationalism. It was expressed and reflected in the thinking, philosophies, political behaviour and teachings of individuals, and I shall look at some examples of these individuals in their historical context. My concern, however, is not so much the biographical data - important as that is - but the social forces that made these individuals act in the way they did.
The emergence of the African working class
The discovery of diamonds and gold in the last third of the nineteenth century was a significant event which led to the emergence of a new social force in African society - the working class.
Africans had been "living and working in Cape Town as early as the 1830s", and from the 1850s, there were Africans employed in road-making and on the harbours in the Cape. But the discovery of diamonds in 1867 transformed Kimberley into a burgeoning mine. Then in 1886 gold was discovered on the Witwatersrand. There emerged an environment in which, during subsequent years, African nationalism was to grow most rapidly. The new mining and later industrial sites drew in migrant peasants and held them as urban proletarians. This coming together of people from different ethnic backgrounds into a single black brotherhood was a new phenomenon, as Lionel Forman remarks:
Here was the nucleus of a true African proletariat, whose future would be in the cities, and whose only way of keeping lawfully alive would be by the sale of its labour. Here was the nucleus of a new class, whose tics with the tribal society would become of the very slenderest; whose economic - and inevitably political - weapon would be that of the workers of all lands, the strike.
Though by 1872, according to a contemporary press report, there were already an estimated 20 000 African workers at Kimberley, the operative word was "nucleus." These workers were able, even at that early stage, to regard themselves not so much as Zulu, Xhosa, Sotho, Tswana and so on but as Africans. This does not mean that the ethnic element disappeared or was forgotten. But it does mean that it was of secondary importance; these men saw themselves as drawn into a single fraternity by their economic interest and this led to a consciousness that all Africans had a common political destiny. This was a prerequisite for an all-embracing African nationalism. It was due to the fact that the emergence of the African working class in South Africa tended to enhance not so much class as national consciousness; the economic grievances that might have led to class struggles, including trade-union action, produced instead a strong current of national feeling among Africans.
But the weapon of the working class - the strike - soon became their form of struggle:
It is remarkable how soon these men were using the universal weapon of the working class - the strike. In December 1882, before there is any record of a strike by white workers in South Africa, one hundred Africans at a Kimberley mine stopped work for two days and brought the mine to a halt, when wages were reduced from 25s to 20s per week ... By 1884 there were at Kimberley no fewer than four different Non-European Benefit Societies, the predecessors of a trade union movement.
Some of these workers did not come to Kimberley because of starvation or the oppressive colonial system. They had other motives. Gwayi Tyamzashe, a Lovedale graduate, who in 1873 became the first African to complete theological studies in South Africa, came to Kimberley to preach the gospel to the diamond diggers in 1872, and became a writer. An eye-witness also reported that:
Those coming from far up in the interior come with the sole purpose of securing guns. [They stay] no longer here than is necessaiy to get some £6 or £7 for the guns. Hence you will see hundreds of them leaving the fields and as many arriving from the North almost every day.
In other words, coming to work on the diamond Gelds was also regarded as a means to pursue the anti-colonial armed resistance in defence of land, cattle and independence.
The process of proletarianization of Africans was also conditioned by essentially coercive or extra-economic factors; the continued existence of the pre-capitalist sector; and the institutionalization of migrant labour, low wages and many other disabilities. The Africans' position was determined by the proGt motive of the mining capitalists and also by the greed of white miners. Two main extra-economic methods, namely, the legislative power of the state and the monopolistic recruiting organizations, were employed to ensure the exploitation of minerals by cheap African labour. The tax and pass laws brought African labour to the mines and controlled it once it was there. The pass laws were introduced under direct pressure from the Chamber of Mines in 1896. They stipulated, among other things, that African miners must wear a metal plate or a "badge" on the arm. This system was later amended and Africans were made to carry passes, documents used to control their movements and where they could live and work.
The Glen Grey Act was another instrument in this process of enslavement. It introduced a tax which, in the words of the mineowner, Cape politician and arch-imperialist, Cecil Rhodes, "removed Natives from the life of sloth and laziness, teaching them the dignity of labour, and made them contribute to the prosperity of the state and made them give some return for our wise and good government."
In the 1890s a powerful and well-organized white capitalist class emerged with ownership of gold and diamond mines in the hands of a few groups of capitalists. Control was centralized. Not only that, it was consolidated by the establishment of the Chamber of Mines in 1887 and two recruiting organizations: the Native Recruiting Corporation, which recruited labour from within South Africa, Bechuanaland (now Botswana), Basutoland (now Lesotho) and Swaziland; and the Witwatersrand Native Labour Association (WNLA) which recruited elsewhere in Africa.
This institutionalized migrant labour ensured a cheap, rightless, voteless and unorganized labour force. It became a justification for pathetically low wages; it hindered the class mobilization of African migrants and especially, the emergence of trade unions; it prevented the workers from developing skills in the performance and control of their work and inhibited the effective formation of a class of African workers.
But the situation was not completely bleak: the young African workers developed initiatives and actions that were suited to the environment and their situation as migrants. In the period 1901-02, there were strikes and what they called "desertions" (on a mass scale) at the Consolidated Main Reef, Geldenhuis, Langlaagte, and Durban Roodepoort Mines as well as at the Vereeniging Coal Mines. It is important to state that the term desertion as applied by the management had negative overtones in that it implied a dereliction of duty. It was part of the management's excuse to avoid any critical examination of the conditions of employment and reasons which caused workers to leave in large numbers and it justified the use of every possible punitive measure against workers.
The problems that faced the African miners were made even worse by the Anglo-Boer War. During this war, 20 000 or more workers were commandeered by the Boer governments of the Transvaal and Orange Free State, either to work without pay for the Boer commandos or in other occupations related to the war effort. Wages were reduced by the Chamber of Mines from 50 shillings, (their level before the Anglo-Boer War) to 30-35 shillings per month. By 1900 a maximum monthly wage of only 20 shillings was introduced. Not only that, a curfew was put into operation: all assemblies of Africans were prohibited; frequent police raids were made into the compounds where workers had to live, to maintain control "over the labour force and to discourage any protests by workers".
Hardships accumulated: 8 000 African workers were conscripted to build a new railway for transporting coal along the Witwatersrand Gold Reef at 10 pence, that is less than a shilling a day; 4 000 men were drafted to form a cheap labour force for the army in the war and the rest were retained by the mines for maintenance work at one shilling a day. Martial-law restrictions were placed on the movement of Africans. It was impossible to return home; they were therefore compelled to remain on the mines long after their contracts had expired.
In addition, working in the mines could, literally, be deadly. The death rate rose steeply from 92 in May 1902 to 247 in November of the same year. Between these months the average monthly death rate per thousand workers was 48,5 and in July 1903, it had reached 112,54. That is why it was important for miners to choose a workplace where conditions were relatively better. "In an environment where death rates were sometimes one in ten, the choice of mine could be a matter of life or death."
Moreover, even before they started work, the miners often arrived in a poor physical state, having travelled long distances on foot or in closed railway coaches with no sanitary facilities - classified as goods rather than passengers. One in eight recruits was found physically unfit to begin work.
It was under these conditions that protests by black workers took place. There were many forms of protest, including refusing to begin work on arrival at the mines, which was, in itself, a means of expressing dissatisfaction with the rates of pay and conditions of work. Another major grievance was that the recruiting agencies often brought the miners to work under false pretences. Even the chiefs were involved at times on the side of the people:
As early as 8 January [1902], Asaph Moruthani, the secretary to the Pedi Chief, Sekukuni II, who had been sent to accompany the work party to the gold fields and report on their conditions of service, complained that the men had been deceived concerning their ultimate destination. Sekukuni had originally refused to supply workers to private industiy, but on the assurance of the local administration that the men were required for government work, he had permitted them to leave.
The workers also demanded equal remuneration and the right to look for work instead of working for a contractor. Compound managers turned workers' discontent into open anger. They rejected out of hand applications by workers for temporary passes to leave the compound, even to visit a store situated within a few hundred metres of the mine - a store with food supplies that were vital for supplementing their diet. Another complaint was ill-treatment: miners were thrashed in the compound and down the mine with a cat-o'-nine tails. They were thrashed on the testicles, and shut up like dogs. Complaints were made to the magistrates about "ill treatment at the hands of the resident engineer who, they reported, regularly sjambokked workers and had them thrown among burning embers."
In 1905 alone, more than 3 585 complaints were made at pass offices along the Gold Reef. These had some measure of success, for example in recovering wages due to workers, correcting some abuses and settling cases of contracts being "extended" without permission of the workers. The courts proved, however, to be lenient towards any white miners convicted of assaulting black ones - a clear example of the state's collaborative violence against black miners.
The group withdrawal of labour - so-called "desertion" - was another form of struggle. Miners would break down the gates of the compounds, some carrying knobkerries, bottles and stones, and would march to town to lay their grievances before the magistrate. At times this included demanding the dismissal of the compound manager.
Initial resistance was often started by potential recruits in the rural areas. The workers either developed their own routes to the Gold Reef avoiding the WNLA tentacles, or would make use of the system. They would take advantage of the facilities and transport provided by labour agents, study the complicated pass system and even forge passes or buy forged ones, and would then leave the mines to look for work in towns. In 1907, the Chairman of Rand Mines described the miners' form of strike as follows:
The native method of striking is very simple. It must be remembered that he is not a permanent workman. He is always going home, and if he is not satisfied with the conditions of employment, he simply does not come out again. The conditions of South Africa make it perfectly possible for him to do this.
These strikes and acts of protest were not only confined to the mining industry. Nevertheless, they were small in scale, took place at different times, in a variety of districts, and were not co-ordinated. Their significance lies in the fact that they were the earliest organized protests by black workers, the first generation of black wage-earners.
What about working-class consciousness at this stage? The characteristic feature of these strikes, walk-outs and withdrawals of labour was that they involved workers from different ethnic groups who confronted the mineowners and administration separately and at different times. Ethnicity did play a role; it was both a divisive and binding force in the protests. Groups of migrant workers originating from a particular area or ethnic group would often withdraw their labour at a particular time. But this should not be misconstrued to mean that "consciousness" had not yet begun to transcend ethnic divisions. It does mean that class consciousness was not seen as a rejection of ethnicity.
The association of resistance with ethnic identity rather than overall worker consciousness testifies to the fact that then the migrant was not a fully fledged worker but a worker-in-the-making. In these circumstances workers would form groups, usually ethnically based, in their compounds to protect themselves from the compound police, possibly from other groups and most of all from the coercive measures of management. These groups provided a measure of security for individual members faced with the daily struggle for survival in the compound and underground. It is true that the management enforced "tribalism" in a variety of ways by dividing workers along ethnic lines, but this tended to cohesion and invigorated worker solidarity, defence and resistance: "Many of the work stoppages or strikes on the Reef in the early part of the decade appeared to coalesce along ethnic lines." This development of ethnic solidarity should, however, be viewed as a particular form of response rather than a transference of tribal values.
Though these work stoppages, confrontations and worker actions during the first decade of the twentieth century were limited in scope and number, they did indicate the potential that existed for the articulation of worker grievances and the organization of effective resistance. There is clear evidence of an emerging and growing working-class consciousness. African miners were far from being passive; they were quick to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the exploitative system to which they were exposed and to adjust their actions accordingly. Within the confines of a highly repressive system, African miners made a positive attempt to alleviate their lot and to minimize their oppression.
Religious influences: the early Christian converts and independent churches
The introduction of Christianity in South Africa was a complicated process which affected many aspects of African society. In analysing this process we shall have to start with the early beginnings, before Christianity took on a mass character in South Africa; before Africans formed their own independent churches with new concepts and values.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from A History of the ANC South Africa Belongs to Us by Francis Meli. Copyright © 1988 Francis Meli. Excerpted by permission of Zimbabwe Publishing House and Indiana University Press.
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