Читать книгу The People’s Paper - Christopher Lowe - Страница 23

In coping with the onslaught of racist laws, editors drew on burgeoning identities of race, nation, ethnicity or region. The focus here is on African race identity and politics. These categories sometimes overlap or dovetail with political movements or factions. Paul Rich speaks of a Congress ‘faction centred around the Congress paper Abantu Batho’, which with the SANNC ‘took the form of a radical black nationalism that appealed to a common racial identity that transcended tribal and ethnic divisions’, and which in the 1920s tended to Garveyism or trade unionism with the ICU’s rise.¹⁰⁵

In this regard, we can ask, pace Bonner on the 1930s, whether ‘ethnic politics’ were, in fulfilment of Seme’s injunction to the inaugural Congress, entirely banished in its pages or whether they persisted. Bonner sees in TAC politics of the 1930s ‘a new kind of non-traditionalist ethnicity … rooted in the countryside and played out in the towns’ between an ‘Eastern Transvaal’ bloc around Makgatho and a ‘Sotho-Tswana’ bloc around S. P. Matseke. These rivalries were rooted in the influence of chiefs and generational change, and the impact of economic depression, land hunger and class.¹⁰⁶

In a society increasingly based on ethnic divisions, it was hard to avoid commenting on ethnic politics. When laws requiring permits to enter the Transkei were used to deny entry to representatives of African organisations such as ICU officials, the editor asked if the Bhunga was ‘a mere cackling shop of witchdoctors and Barbarians, or is it a Native sub-Parliament? Surely the Bhunga cannot look on in silence while the natives are thus bagged in their own territories.’ Sadly, it was a case of a ‘Bhunga white elephant’.¹⁰⁷

Abantu-Batho’s language columns may have mirrored ethnic divisions, but editorial policy followed Seme’s call for national unity, although by the 1920s both Seme and the black press had in some ways abandoned this purity for more regional or ethnic predilections. The language columns also spoke to the genuine regional interests of readers. This might take the form of Chief K. K. Pilane writing in from the north-west on TNC business, a brief note on the arrival in eGoli (Johannesburg) of Prince Sobhuza or Chief Victor Poto, or commentary from The Zoutpansberg Review on Hertzog and the National Party.¹⁰⁸

Transcending colonial-imposed boundaries to roam across the sub-continent, the wider continent and the African diaspora, the paper articulated a growing Pan-Africanism and even Black Consciousness. An early and potent form of this wider identity was Garveyism, the focus of Robert Vinson’s chapter in this volume, and some Abantu-Batho extracts are in the Garvey Papers.¹⁰⁹ It is germane to mention here some additional aspects of South African Garveyism as they relate to Abantu-Batho. As early as 1919 Champion commented on the slogan ‘Africa for the Africans’ and Abantu-Batho.¹¹⁰ Thema, when still working for the paper in 1920, gave Garveyism a boost.¹¹¹ In November 1920 a leader supporting Garveyism appeared.¹¹² Yet there were earlier connecting threads. From the start the paper expressed a strong broad Pan-African line. It published the views of white sympathisers with African self-rule. In September 1914 it printed a letter by Joseph Booth (see Part II),¹¹³ the English missionary who wrote Africa for the Africans in 1897 and influenced John Chilembwe’s 1915 Nyasaland rising and may also have influenced the paper’s founder, Seme.¹¹⁴ Booth had moved to South Africa in 1902, where he was a regular contributor to the black press, promoting his British Christian Union and British African Congress. In 1913 he sought funds from readers of Plaatje’s Tsala ea Batho to print 50,000 copies of a speech of Saul Msane to distribute in Britain. He also befriended Congressmen Dube, Plaatje and Thomas Zini, and in August 1914, as possibly the only white delegate, received loud applause at the SANNC’s Bloemfontein gathering.¹¹⁵ In 1913 Booth had been interviewed in Mvabaza and Msane’s Mlomo wa Bantu (which in 1916 merged with Abantu-Batho) in which he clearly supported the black franchise and representation.¹¹⁶

The same issue of Abantu-Batho that published Booth carried poems by Charles Garnett, who had supported a 1907 black South African delegation to London and probably influenced the thinking of Garvey, perhaps meeting him in London in 1913; this suggests an even earlier tangential Garvey link with Abantu-Batho. Garnett spent seven months in South Africa in 1909, founding a branch of a body called New Fraternity.¹¹⁷

It was, however, from late 1919 that Garveyist influence really began to be felt on Abantu-Batho. Part of the attraction was black solidarity and prospects of mutual aid. The conservative press was appalled that Abantu-Batho should ‘waste space’ on a report of funds from Garvey to support black resistance.¹¹⁸ Connections between Garveyism and Abantu-Batho extended to Rhodesia and South West Africa. Several letters reached Abantu-Batho from Zimbabweans (some based in South Africa) in 1923,¹¹⁹ perhaps reflecting greater coverage of Southern African affairs in the paper. Some of the letters have been previously published in the Garvey Papers, but in Part II we reproduce others hitherto unpublished. In one, Ernest Dube heralded the formation of the Rhodesia Bantu Voters’ Association. Just as black South Africans looked for inspiration and material aid to African-Americans, so black Zimbabweans ‘hope[d] with the help we will get from our brothers in the South of Africa things will right themselves’. Garveyism could be a conduit for this Pan-African solidarity.

Branches of Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Society formed in South West Africa and in 1922 a South West ANC sought SANNC affiliation.¹²⁰ Abantu-Batho probably circulated there. In 1922 Lüderitzbuchter Zeitung translated extracts that Die Volksstem in Pretoria had quoted from Abantu-Batho’s editorial of 20 July, which clearly advocated a Garveyist or African nationalist policy:

The white press always shall scream, once and for all, that ‘white South Africa’ is our country. Why do we have to remain silent and not claim a ‘Black South Africa’?– Our slogan must now be: ‘Black South Africa’. And then, in order to make a start, we need 2,000,000 half-crowns. The Congress has already requested this. … Mr Gandhi is sentenced to 6 years in the hole because he wants to have India for the Indians. Mr Marcus Garvey will also be prosecuted because he works for the interests of Black workers in America. The same holds true for the cases of Egypt and Ireland. Recently fighting took place with the Hottentots in Southwest Africa for the same reason. Here these nations fight for their rights. So there is no prior reason why we should not demand a ‘Black South Africa’! We hope that we will soon find a way to get to a Black South Africa!

The extract continues: ‘Elsewhere, Abantu-Batho portrays in a provocative manner the crackdown on the Bondelswarts’ and then says:

Do General Smuts and his Cabinet really think this is the way to solve the great ‘Black Problem’? Must machine-guns and warplanes accompany every black revolt? If so, heaven help the small white population in South Africa in years to come, when Blacks have learnt the lessons of scientific warfare and revenge.¹²¹

There are other interesting instances concerning Abantu-Batho and Garveyism. Perhaps inspired by Garvey, in 1923 Western Cape ANC leader James Thaele criticised Abantu-Batho’s ‘too optimistic’ approach to black history.¹²² In 1930, with Garvey banished to Jamaica, Abantu-Batho reprinted articles from Garvey’s Negro World on his predicament,¹²³ and highlighted his minor legal victories (‘indeed a dangerous man for all the great powers that are exploiting Africa’) and his portrait. Garvey was ‘carrying out the command of God’ as a vital symbol (‘If Italy has a Mussolini, if India has a Mahatma Gandhi, why should not Africa have a Garvey?’).¹²⁴ For his part, Garvey cited Abantu-Batho on how the white power structure was wooing Coloured¹²⁵ people in the Cape by presenting ‘a beautiful picture of what one intends to do’, but their ‘real object’ was to create ‘a buffer between the Africans and the Europeans. As a buffer, the Cape coloured people can never have the same rights as whites.’¹²⁶

Influenced by Garveyism and the Paris Peace Conference, Abantu-Batho articulated a growing Pan-African solidarity and anti-colonialism. In February 1920 Thema contributed a first-hand report written the previous July on victory celebrations, detailing a march through London of diverse contributors to the defeat of German militarism, but then turning to the millions from ‘Alexandria to Cape Town’ suffering not ‘under the cruel claws of the German Eagle but under the Union Jack’.¹²⁷ In May the editor pointed to the hypocrisy of imperialist policy, whether in Turkey or Africa:

the manner in which this black nation is being treated by the European Powers is a matter of practical interest to the Bantu nations all over Africa. Africans should wake up and study the Imperial and International politics. It was the European nations that first advocated and adopted the principles of self-determination and now we see the same European nations rob the Turks of their land .... We would like our readers to realise very forcibly that it is not the question of right or justice with the Turks. It is a question of colour. European nations want to propagate in other countries their opinions and define customs which they call civilisation.¹²⁸

Abantu-Batho expressed Pan-African solidarity with neighbouring countries. The case of Swaziland is discussed in chapters by Chris Lowe, Grant Christison and Sarah Mkhonza in this volume. For many years the Basutoland (now Lesotho) press and Abantu-Batho reported each other.¹²⁹ In its first few years Abantu-Batho paid close attention to Swaziland, with reports often likening its predicament to that of Basutoland. In late 1912 the editor complained that ‘stationing five armies at the native borders’, including Basutoland, ‘shows some distrust of the loyalty’ of Africans.¹³⁰ In 1914, commenting that a ‘Swazi Scare’ was ‘an ingeniously got-up canard’ for ‘military occupation of Swaziland’, he added, ‘[h]ad it not been for the presence of French Protestant Missionaries, even Basutoland would have long ago fallen a victim to this treacherous policy’.¹³¹ In 1916 the editor mused, ‘[c]ertain as the Night succeeds the Day, the Swazis, and with them the Basuto will under the Union fare worse than under their present Administrations’.¹³² In 1918 the loyalty of Basuto chiefs contrasted with the disloyalty of some white people.¹³³

Like Abantu-Batho, the radical Basutoland commoner movement Lekhotla la Bafo called for Garvey’s release. Josiel Lefela, its leader, claimed in the 1920s that censorship denied him access to Naledi, Mochochonono and Abantu-Batho, obliging him to turn for support to the Communist Party’s South African Worker.¹³⁴ However, Abantu-Batho did report on his policies in 1922.¹³⁵ Swazi, Sotho and Tswana peoples were active on both sides of the border, and we need more research on these connections.

All this was not just regional solidarity and opposition to racial prejudice was not limited to cases of racism against Africans. In 1913 Abantu-Batho printed across two issues the speech of a leading Jewish socialist, Yeshaya Israelstam, to the second conference of the SANNC.¹³⁶ A long article in 1923 expressed solidarity with Kenyans, not only deported African leader Harry Thuku, but also Indian Kenyans, seen as black Africans.¹³⁷ Abantu-Batho had printed a piece from South African Outlook viewing Indian Kenyans in a derogatory way, which was seen by The International as revealing the ‘confusion brought into the “native mind” by bourgeois imperialist education’. The article ‘upheld the Kenya whites’ because ‘they would be BETRAYING THEIR TRUST to the natives if they acquiesced in the transfer of power to the Asiatic. … The African … despises the Indian for his spinelessness.’ Would not the Indian be justified in ‘returning the compliment to Abantu-Batho?’ The stinging attack perhaps influenced the later editorial.¹³⁸ There were other reports on Kenya and East Africa, treating, among other things, the scramble for Africa and settler opposition to plans for legal equality in a British Labour government white paper.¹³⁹

That Gandhi or his staff read Abantu-Batho is suggested by Indian Opinion reprinting a first-hand account of women’s anti-pass law protests as reported in Abantu-Batho.¹⁴⁰ In 1918 an Abantu-Batho article linked Indian and African struggles.¹⁴¹ In 1919 Letanka, in his capacity as Abantu-Batho editor, rejected an invitation from the Transvaal Whites’ Protection League to an anti-Indian conference, declaring it not in African interests ‘to encourage, morally or otherwise, any movement based on colour lines’.¹⁴² Also printed was a TNC resolution against a trend among whites to ‘foment racial … prejudice’ around the ‘alleged Asiatic Menace’, a prejudice rooted in the fear of trading competition and an ‘exact analogy’ to the Land Act, which could be turned against Africans. It deplored ‘the movement against Indians’ and declared ‘any contemplated movement against them’ to be ‘unjust and inequitable’ and ‘based on colour prejudice’.¹⁴³

Solidarity with India’s liberation movement increased. Gumede had met Nehru at an anti-imperialist conference in Brussels in 1927 and anti-imperialism was a growing tendency in the ANC and Communist Party of South Africa press, whose writers contributed articles to Abantu-Batho on India’s liberation struggles.¹⁴⁴ The year 1930 marked a sharp upswing in the anti-colonial struggle in India, which Abantu-Batho quite extensively reported, including cloth and salt boycotts. Some coverage recalled the 1924 South African visit of Gandhi’s lieutenant, Sarojini Naidu, and the arrest of Manilal Gandhi. It also reprinted a May 1930 communiqué of solidarity with this struggle from the international Secretariat of the League against Imperialism in Berlin, with whom Gumede had become involved, that was critical of Gandhi’s non-violent tactics.¹⁴⁵ Gumede probably penned a two-part anti-imperialist call to action aimed at Abantu-Batho readers that made a ‘united world-wide appeal … to the chiefs of Africa, the doomed and pitiable inhabitants of Africa’. Africans ‘could do it for ourselves’ but ‘[l]et us take our lesson from the Indians, Japanese and Chinese’.¹⁴⁶

The modus vivendi between the state and South African Indian Congress, epitomised by its treasurer, I. B. Patel, garlanding Hertzog, was ‘hypocrisy on both sides’, for Indian South Africans could thank Hertzog only for their ‘present state of helotry’. Unless Hertzog stopped his derogatory ‘“coolie” talk’ and policies, his acceptance of ‘that sacred garland’ was an ‘impudent and ghoulish outrage on the sanctity of Indian traditions’. It was ‘stupid and wicked’ for the government to try to expel Indians after having brought them to the country. ‘We would humbly and reverently ask our Indian friends to pause and meditate before they make light of their honoured and time-worn customs.’ The Abantu-Batho editor concluded with an appeal for unity against ‘all anti-black laws’, mixed with a warning to Indian and Coloured South Africans that going it alone ‘would never bring them any closer to success’.¹⁴⁷ Another factor may have been Indian capital. Seme’s original African Trading Company had become by 1922 the African and Indian Trading Association Ltd, with K. V. Patel and D. M. Nursoo on the board, although Indian advertisements are not very prominent. The company secretary, Skota, also the Abantu-Batho editor, called a shareholders’ meeting in July 1930 to reduce the allotment of shares to enable the Association legally to recommence business.¹⁴⁸

That Abantu-Batho may have drawn on Indian capital in its last few years makes it tempting to account for a growing anti-imperialist solidarity in its pages, yet it had deep roots. In 1918 a special SANNC conference of chiefs sent a memorial to the British king saying emphatically that the Union of South Africa and Belgium should keep their hands off South West Africa, and East Africa and the Congo, respectively, until the wishes of the Africans were met. The ANC’s 1919 constitution refers to ‘one Pan-African Association’, including territories and protectorates, with membership open to ‘all men belonging to the aboriginal races of Africa’; it was ‘a big National Organisation whose scope and activities will cover a great portion of the African Continent’.¹⁴⁹