Apartheid gets started
Episode 2: the South African Native National Congress; Black South Africans get 7% of the land; the relentless rollout of apartheid, D.F. Malan establishes what became the modern National Party.
Last week we looked at the Union’s constitution and early attempts by Black activists to get a qualified franchise. This week we pick up the story with the formation of the South African Native National Congress and with the relentless rollout of apartheid legislation.
There is a glossary for acronyms here.
The South African Native National Congress launches (January 1912)
In March 1910 on the eve of the formation of the Union, Black South African leaders met in Bloemfontein to organize a response. They decided to call a convention. In October 1911, Pixley Seme, a lawyer born to a prominent Zulu clan in Natal, wrote a call to action in Imvo Zabantsundu (Native Voice, for a copy see Johns, 1987, p. 72):
“There is today among all races and men a general desire for progress and cooperation… The South African Native Congress is the voice bidding all the dark races of this sub-continent to come together once or twice a year in order to review the past and reject therein all those things which have retarded our progress…
“If we wish to convince the Government that it is possible to have a uniform Native policy, then let us form this Congress. The demon of racialism, the aberrations of the Xosa-Fingo feud, the animosity that exists between the Zulus and the Tongaas must be buried and forgotten… These divisions are the cause of our woes…
“Natives everywhere know that a South African Native Congress such as proposed in these columns, will give them the only effective means to make their grievances properly known… This is a general announcement to all the Native leaders... to arrange for the sending of delegates so that every section of the people shall be represented in that Conference of the races..."
Seme suggested a two-part agenda. The first would involve establishing the Congress and electing office bearers. The second would consist of deliberations, starting with “a vote of confidence in General the Right Honourable Louis Botha, P.C.” We must assume that it would have been a vote of no confidence. There would then be general discussions on such topics as native unity, schools, churches, etc. It was to function as a parallel parliament.
The founding meeting took place on 8 January 1912 under the leadership of Seme, John Dube, and Sol Plaatje. Estimates suggest that between 100 and 200 delegates attended. They came from all of Southern Africa and encompassed all walks of life: workers, chiefs, intellectuals, church leaders, and professionals. They called the organization the South African Native National Congress. Seme summarized their purpose in an article in Ilanga Lase Natal (‘The Sun of Natal’): “The South African Native National Congress is a Native Parliament composed of two houses. The Executive Commoners and… the Nobles or Chiefs.” They elected John Dube as its first president.
It took a while for the Congress to agree a constitution, partly because of World War I. In September 1919, the first constitution was published. (for a copy, see Johns, 1987, pp. 76-82). In what follows, I’ve paraphrased the original but preserved its language. You will find the SANNC’s objectives in Ch. 3 of the constitution. They included:
To unite under the aegis of a deliberative assembly all organizations whose aims are the promotion of the interests of the aboriginal races. To be the medium (which expresses) representative opinion to educate the (White) Parliament and public regarding the requirements and aspirations of the Native people.
To educate Bantu people on their rights and to bring together all tribes and clans and by means of united political organization to defend their rights and to contend against racialism and tribal feuds.
To agitate against the Colour Bar and for equitable representation of Natives in Parliament. To seek the redress of grievances by constitutional means…
To expound the right system of education in all schools and colleges; and to encourage habits of industry and thrift and the gospel of the dignity of labour.
In the constitution’s fourth chapter the drafters specified the “methods or modus operandi” of the organization (again, paraphrased but using the drafters’ words):
“The Association will achieve its aims by means of resolutions, protests, and deputations… and by united and passive action according to a constitutional and peaceful agenda. "… when the time is ripe, it will form a group of members to secure their election to all legislative and administrative bodies…”
In 1923 the SANNC changed its name to the African National Congress. But in the meantime, apartheid had started with a vengeance.
Racial legislation in the first decades of the Union
Many British Lords had argued that South Africa would evolve into a non-racial democracy over time. It didn’t. Instead, successive Union parliaments took South Africa in a direction modelled on the 1905 report of the British Government’s South African Native Affairs Commission, chaired by Sir Godfrey Lagden.
The Commission had recommended that South Africa be divided into separate territories for Blacks and Whites. It added that Blacks living in urban areas should be forced to live in segregated “locations,” and it recommended separate political systems for the two races.
Soon after the election, the Botha government began enacting laws along the lines envisaged in Lagden’s report:
Native Labour Regulation and Mines and Works Acts (1911): regulated Blacks’ employment in an attempt to control their migration into urban areas. Outlawed strikes by Black workers. Reserved skilled and semi-skilled jobs for Whites.
Immigration Regulation Act (1913): made it difficult for Indians to immigrate into South Africa and stopped Indians already in South Africa from moving from one province to another.
Native Land Act (1913): limited Black South Africans’ right to own land to “scheduled native areas” which were 7% of the country. Blacks were about 67% of the population. It was a massive act of land dispossession.
When war broke out in 1914, South Africa was required by colonial law to join the side of the British. This caused a former Boer general and member of Botha’s government, J.B.M. Hertzog, to breakaway and form the National Party. In the 1915 election, Afrikaner resentment after the Boer War was still so high that support for Hertzog’s nationalists immediately jumped to 30%. He won 27 seats. Botha’s SAP won 54 seats - not enough for a majority in the 130-seat parliament. He governed with support from the mostly English-speaking Unionists.
Jan Smuts became the leader of the SAP when Botha died in 1919. The SAP had continued to lose Afrikaner support in the post-war years. As a result, Hertzog’s National Party won 33% of the vote and 43 seats in the 1920 election. Smuts only won 41 seats. The White socialist Labour Party went from 3 seats (in 1910) to 21 seats with the support of militant English-speaking workers (it was the era of the Bolshevik revolution). Smuts was only able to govern by forming a formal coalition with the Unionists. Later that year, the Unionists merged into the SAP.
And discrimination marched on:
Native Urban Areas Act (1923): it became illegal for Blacks to live outside racially segregated “locations” in South African cities. Based on the 1922 Stallard report which had recommended that “Natives” should only be allowed into urban areas “as long as their presence is demanded by the white population.”
Worker militancy had become violent in 1921/22 when White mine workers turned out in force to protest the employment of lower-paid Black workers by the so-called “Rand Lords” (European capitalists). With the involvement of organized Marxists, it developed a kind of revolutionary momentum called the Rand Rebellion. Smuts put down the rebellion by force with the help of the army – and lost more White working-class support. Hertzog’s National Party and the socialist Labour Party took advantage to form an electoral pact for the 1924 election. It was an odd marriage of Afrikaner nationalists with English socialists. They won a huge majority with 81 of 135 seats. They formed what came to be known as the Pact government. The Pact held together and subsequently won the 1929 election. By that time, Hertzog had consolidated the Afrikaner nationalist vote; and the NP by itself won 41% of the vote. Smuts was out, Hertzog was in, and discrimination marched on:
Immorality Act (1927): prohibited White and Black South Africans from what it called “carnal intercourse.” Whites could still inter-marry with other ethnic minorities.
Native Service Contract Act (1932): Black farm workers were forced to stay on the farms on which they were working. They could not look for better paying jobs somewhere else. The Act legalised barbaric practices like whipping.
White women got the vote in 1930. But the onset of the Great Depression pitched South Africa into an economic crisis. As a result, Hertzog and Smuts decided to form a governing coalition in 1933. To ratify the coalition, they called an early election. By that time the legislature had increased to 150. The coalition won in a landslide: Hertzog’s NP = 75 seats; Smuts’s SAP = 61 seats. In 1934 they merged to form the United Party. This so angered an Afrikaner faction of Hertzog’s former National Party that it broke away under D.F. Malan to form the Gesuiwerde Nasionale Party (Purified National Party). The Gesuiwerdes had 19 seats.
Back in 1925 when still in the Pact, Hertzog had given a speech about his solution to the so-called “Native problem.” In essence, it simply reiterated a hard-line approach to territorial segregation, but added a structure for Black governance. His ideas came to fruition when the United Party passed the:
Representation of Natives Act (1936): creating an advisory body of 22 members called the Natives Representative Council. 12 were Blacks elected by male Black taxpayers; 6 were Whites and 4 were Blacks nominated by the Dept of Native Affairs. The Council could only advise. Removed Blacks in the Cape from the common voters’ roll.
The Hertzog-Smuts government also enacted further discrimination against Indians:
Marketing and Land Occupation Act (1937): gave the government sweeping powers to expropriate Indian-owned land in rural areas.
World War II led to another political split: Smuts wanted to join the Allies while Hertzog wanted to stay neutral or join the Germans. Hertzog lost the caucus vote, left the United Party, and formed the Volksparty (People’s Party). In 1940, he merged with Malan’s Gesuiwerdes to form the Herenigde Nasionale Party (Reunited National Party). In the 1943 election, Malan’s reunited nationalists won 43 seats to the United Party’s 89.
The naivety of the British Lords is apparent when you read the debates that led to all these laws. The country’s racist drift was an inevitable consequence of its race-based franchise. Governments are accountable to their electorates and what the majority of White South Africans wanted was segregation and entrenched White control. And so, by the Second World War:
Black South Africans (about 70% of the population) could only own land in about 13% of the country.
Blacks had no self-government - not even in the 13% of the land they owned. They could only “advise” through the Natives Representative Council.
If they moved to cities to find work they had to live in racially separate dormitory towns, usually on the periphery of the cities.
Skilled and semi-skilled jobs were reserved for Whites. It was difficult for any race other than Whites to get apprenticeships.
Like Blacks, Indians also could not move around the country freely. Immigration into South Africa was restricted. Indians were being herded into racially separate suburbs by expropriation of the land they owned in rural areas.
Next week: Gandhi’s theory of resistance.