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Chapter 2

The emergence of white opposition to apartheid, 1950–1953

In the years between 1950 and 1953 the differences between liberal and radical whites took organisational shape. White opposition to the Nationalist Party (NP) rose to a level that would never be seen again, with tens of thousands of whites joining night-time marches organised by the Torch Commando. Bearing torches and symbolic coffins and using anti-fascist/anti-Nazi slogans they opposed the removal of coloured (and some Indian) voters from the electoral roll. A scattering of whites also joined the Defiance Campaign, a passive resistance campaign organised by the Congress Alliance to highlight the increasingly repressive apartheid laws and bolster the profile and membership of Congress.

In November 1952 the African National Congress (ANC) and the South African Indian Congress (SAIC) attempted to capitalise on white anti-NP sentiment and called for the creation of a ‘parallel white organisation’ to work with them.¹ But divisions among whites opposing the NP ran deep – deeper, certainly, than ANC leaders expected. Liberal and radical whites differed over universal suffrage, relations with ex-communists, participation in a multiracially structured Alliance as opposed to a single organisation for people regardless of race, and the efficacy of extra-parliamentary opposition – a clutch of issues that would separate them throughout the 1950s. White radicals, including a number of former members of the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA), formed the South African Congress of Democrats (SACOD), while liberals remained within the United Party (UP) fold until after the 1953 election, when one strand of liberal opinion broke away to form the Liberal Party (LP).

For the black population the period after 1948 was one of unremitting repression, falling real wages, and personal and employment insecurity. But for whites, South Africa was a different country. The legislative bedrock of apartheid was laid between 1949 and 1953, with the Group Areas Act, which enforced residential and business segregation; the Population Registration Act, which embedded race classification; the Separate Representation of Voters Act, which ultimately disenfranchised coloured voters; the Separate Amenities Act, which entrenched the principle of unequal amenities for different races and the Suppression of Communism Act, which gave the government an armoury of repressive powers. The 1948 election was followed by a reduction in capital inflows and a balance of payments crisis that peaked in 1949. But by 1950 the economy was showing real growth, which the opening of new gold and uranium mines promised to sustain.²With the strengthening economy came a ‘strong’ government promising to end black protest, political and industrial.

The rise of the NP was paralleled by the decay of the UP and its continued inability to offer nothing more than tonal differences from the NP. When NP backbenchers proposed concentration camps for participants in the 1952 Defiance Campaign – terrifying in itself – Julius Lewin, organiser of the liberal Hofmeyr Society (within the UP) reported: ‘It is already possible to visualise certain United Party members of Parliament solemnly declaring that the principle of concentration camps for Non-European resistance leaders is sound, but that the diet proposed is inadequate and there should be more latrines.’³

Internationally, anti-communist legislation was tabled in Canada, Australia and elsewhere in response to the Cold War. In South Africa the NP brought out Sir Percy Sillitoe, head of MI5, to advise them on the best means of combating communism. Through both innuendo and in-your-face smears the NP successfully generated suspicion of any message of racial equality as crypto-communist. Liberal academic Leo Kuper described this tactic as, ‘the progressive redefinition of communism as synonymous with non-discrimination on the basis of race or colour’.⁴NP vitriol was so powerful and white racism such a receptive organism that it was easy to extend the stain of communism to cover liberalism as well.

Listen, for example, to the words of George Heaton Nicholls, later leader of the Natal-based Union-Federal Party: ‘If Liberalism manifests itself in a humanitarian impulse to assist the downtrodden, if it is a matter of the heart, then I am a Liberal: but if it is a system of government, or aims at a system of government which considers a Hottentot equal in political stature to the astronomer Royal, then I am not a Liberal.’⁵

After Native Representative Hymie Basner took segregation to the United Nations in 1946 all the Representatives were accused by the NP of destroying white racial purity. When CPSA Central Committee member Sam Kahn was elected to Parliament as Western Cape Native Representative, a NP MP ‘… with his eyes glued on Mr Sam Kahn … said that if he had his way, all agitators would be put against a wall and shot’.⁶

The constitutional crisis and opposition

The early 1950s were dominated by the NP government’s battle to disenfranchise coloured (and some Indian) voters (a significant electoral factor in some seven Cape constituencies).⁷ The battle began in 1948 with a warning from the government of impending legislation and lasted through to the packing of the Senate in 1956 to force through the changes. It provided a clear indication of how far the NP would go to implement apartheid successfully.⁸

The extended constitutional crisis, which fuelled black and white political mobilisation, saw the Appellate Division set aside both the Separate Representation of Voters Act, passed with only a simple majority in 1951, and an attempt by the government to constitute the legislature as the High Court of Parliament.

The crisis gave rise to the most widespread anti-NP demonstrations by whites in the history of apartheid. Running parallel to white protest was the Defiance Campaign, which marked a new militancy among Congress members. On the occasions that the two movements intersected, white opposition fractured through wariness of black militancy, particularly when harnessed in extra-parliamentary protest, and in a context of widespread anti-communism.

In 1952 the War Veterans’ Torch Commando mobilised a paid-up membership of more than 250 000 (overwhelmingly white) ex-servicepeople, while the ANC and SAIC passive resistance campaign saw more than 8 000 volunteers arrested and paid-up membership of the ANC rise to more than 100 000.⁹ This ‘mass’ politics was new to South Africa; even more marked was the fact that all races participated in large numbers – albeit in separate organisations, exemplifying again the apparent contradiction of pursuing racial equality through racially separate organisations.

The Springbok Legion, which was a prime mover in using ex-servicepeople as a basis for opposition and in the formation of the Torch Commando, gave the Commando a militancy and, thanks in part to theatre director Cecil Williams, a Springbok Legion and CPSA member, a flair for dramatic protest action, until an internal purge of Legionnaires by its more conservative leadership. Thereafter, the Commando became a mass-based electoral adjunct to the UP, its creative energy spent and its political purpose lost, and it soon passed away.

The Defiance Campaign, marked by the discipline of the volunteers who deliberately broke apartheid laws and regulations in order to get arrested, grew throughout 1952 until repressed by draconian legislation – supported by the UP and the Torch Commando. It gave the congresses a renewed vigour and profile they would battle to match again during the 1950s as political space closed down, security police clamped down, and membership numbers declined steadily.

The Defiance Campaign breathed life into the ANC and SAIC, led to the formation of the Congress Alliance, and wedded Congress to militant, extra-parliamentary opposition. The Torch Commando, before it fizzled out, represented the first and last large-scale protest by whites against apartheid. Faced with a choice between defending principle and suppressing black militancy, the overwhelming preponderance of whites, even those who began by upholding the former, chose the latter.

Both more and less conservative forms of resistance to the NP contributed to and capitalised on the political ferment that accompanied attempts to force disenfranchisement legislation into the statute book. The political mobilisation of the period between 1951 and 1953, in particular the organisation of previously politically quiescent sectors of the population such as coloured voters and anti-NP whites, boosted hopes for the emergence of large white and coloured organisations to work alongside the African and Indian congresses.

In November 1952 the ANC and the SAIC called for the formation of a white congress, expecting an initial membership of 5 000 – one-fiftieth of the membership of the Torch Commando.¹⁰ Even that modest figure wildly over-estimated white opposition. And, instead of a single white political ally of the congresses there emerged a series of competing organisations beset by competition and sniping and pursuing different goals and strategies, some marked by deep antipathy to the goals and methods of the congresses.

White liberal responses to the constitutional crisis

Opposition to NP attempts to disenfranchise coloured voters was initially led by the Civil Rights League (CRL) and the Franchise Action Committee (FRAC). The CRL, which grew out of the Cape South African Institute of Race Relations (SAIRR) and was launched at a ‘Citizens Rally’ attended by 10 000 people, aimed to rally white opinion against the unconstitutional manoeuvres of the government.¹¹ It soon gained a popular following and attracted large audiences to its meetings. The left-wing Guardian newspaper welcomed it and its ability to rally white support, stating: ‘Now, resistance to these attacks is taking shape’.¹²

The League, overwhelmingly white, was led by senior SAIRR figures and recruited whites radicalised by the war but with little previous political involvement.¹³ Regarding the parliamentary arena and strengthening the UP as its main area of activity, it stressed the need for constitutional action and saw its role as ‘building up a strong body of enlightened opinion throughout South Africa’.¹⁴ Whether this patronising tone and approach could have sustained the political mobilisation of whites, galvanised by opposition to the NP government’s constitutional manoeuvring, is questionable.

FRAC, on the other hand, was a non-racial amalgam – black and white ex-communists rubbed shoulders with conservative members of the Coloured People’s National Union (which organised voters threatened with disenfranchisement), coloured workers threatened by the white protectionism of apartheid legislation and others.¹⁵ Communists Fred Carneson and Sam Kahn were among the leaders of FRAC, which included among its members a number of former CPSA activists. While the CRL organised petitions and meetings, FRAC concentrated on organising workers and staged a successful one-day strike in the Cape Province in May 1951. Where the CRL insisted on parliamentary methods, FRAC was represented on the planning council of the Defiance Campaign, alongside the ANC and SAIC.

Notions of ‘constitutionality’ were not restricted to more or less conservative white liberals in the CRL, SAIRR and elsewhere. FRAC stressed the ‘constitutionality’ of its actions, by which it meant the legality of extra-parliamentary activity for an unrepresented population. The ANC shared the same view, as stated by its President-General, James Moroka: ‘… a general strike in any civilised country at all is constitutional. Today in South Africa, America, everywhere the white people settle issues by strikes. It is only when a man is oppressed that he is not allowed to strike when the occasion warrants it.’¹⁶

In part, this was a defensive discourse, emphasising the legality of protest in advance of a predictably suppressive NP backlash. But it was also a discourse common to white and black liberals, radicals, nationalists and communists.

The effect of the constitutional crisis was to focus white anti-Nationalist attention on the black franchise, albeit via the defence of an inequitable and limited coloured vote. The apartheid onslaught on black rights also obliged liberals to confront political issues they had previously avoided. This was most clearly true of the black franchise, ignored by the liberals in the 1940s but suddenly under threat.

For some liberals, such as Leo Marquard, who had long called for a qualified black franchise, this change of direction was a ‘relief’:

It is a good thing that we have at last been forced by recent events to face this issue squarely. For far too long we have evaded it, gone around it, behind it, and over it. We have pushed it into the background, as an uncomfortable thing, an embarrassing thing, with which we hoped we would not have to deal. Our children and grandchildren perhaps, but not we …¹⁷

Marquard was, in most respects, exceptional: it is unlikely his sense of relief at having to confront uncomfortable political realities was widely shared. But liberals also had to change strategy in the new circumstances: appeals to reason had to be supplemented with organisation and mobilisation, traditionally the terrain of the Communist Party and trade unions.

The CRL reflected this change in strategy, with liberals moving from attempting to mediate between political players to appealing directly for public support themselves (albeit while working closely with the UP). The leadership of the CRL comprised senior SAIRR members and its appeal was to English middle-class voters alienated by the NP. The league was an inherently cautious and defensive organisation, committed to retaining the status quo and resisting ‘the inordinate curtailment of the liberties of the individual’.¹⁸ This was a long way from demanding full equality. It organised public meetings, and its main activity was a petition signed by 100 000 people opposing the Separate Representation of Voters Bill. As Leo Marquard put it: ‘That was all in public. Behind the scenes we continued to work on the U.P. ...’.¹⁹

CRL leaders and senior UP members worked closely together and the CRL failed to offer any political vision or strategy other than to vote UP. The league was soon overtaken by the Torch Commando in leading opposition to coloured disenfranchisement, but both suffered from the same problem – their links with the UP and their failure to offer any options beyond voting UP. The league’s leaders maintained a staunchly ‘apolitical’ stance, claiming ‘[o]ur Constitution is in danger … This threat must be resisted on the grounds that it is immoral’.²⁰

In place of a political platform the League relied on the ‘practical’ approach of the SAIRR and others, which seemed scarcely to welcome any form of racial integration but accepted it as inevitable. The CRL stated: ‘With the economic integration of the Non-European proceeding apace – and this process cannot be stopped – the internal peace of South Africa depends upon amicable relations between the different groups.’²¹

Within the League there were different tendencies. The CRL attracted a younger generation, politicised by the Second World War, who welcomed the opportunity to articulate clearly a ‘liberal’ racial policy.²² The League’s leaders strove to maintain a ‘moderate’ image in contrast with that of the more strident younger liberals in its own ranks and the ‘radical’ activities of FRAC and other extra-parliamentary organisations. Lewis claimed that the CRL provided ‘impressive support’ for a strike organised by FRAC in Cape Town²³ but pressure from younger CRL members for active participation was quashed by the movement’s leaders.²⁴

The Torch Commando

The Torch Commando was formed after a Springbok Legion demonstration at the Johannesburg cenotaph in March 1951, where a symbolic constitution was laid to rest,²⁵ and soon gained a significant following. Legionnaires in the Commando organised the Steel Commando – a convoy of Jeeps which converged on Cape Town from across the country²⁶ for a massive protest meeting – with an estimated attendance of some 75 000.²⁷ The demonstration degenerated into violence, with police baton-charging crowds of coloured sympathisers.

The commando flared brightly but briefly on the political scene, highlighting many of the tensions between radical and liberal whites at the time and subsequently.²⁸ Ex-service organisations began to form protest committees after the early release from prison of Robey Leibbrandt, a Nazi-trained saboteur, and the premature removal of senior English-speaking defence force officers.

Protests organised by the Combined Ex-Servicemen’s Associations drew crowds of 10 000 in Johannesburg and Cape Town.²⁹ Characterising the NP as Nazis, ex-service organisations drew large crowds around the country by playing on the language and solidarity of the war. The Torch Commando, emphasising wartime comradeship, mobilised whites through a clever combination of deliberately vague goals and virulent opposition to the ‘fascists’ in power. As a spokesperson put it, ‘the men who fought did so for principles they can only vaguely express. But we know that legislation like this is a direct negation of what we fought for.’³⁰

Displaying a degree of militancy that was entirely lacking in the CRL, the Legion called for the immediate resignation of the government and threatened to ‘bring the country to a standstill’.³¹

The Legion’s flair for dramatic street protests invigorated the CRL, giving it an appeal beyond existing party-political affiliations; an appeal later killed off by positioning the Commando too closely to the UP. Joel Mervis noted at the time that the Commando’s ‘great attraction to the ordinary man was the very fact that it was not a political party, for it thus became a haven for people of all political faiths’.³²

It is apparent even from this attenuated rendering that similar tensions affected both the CRL and the Torch Commando. On the specific issue of the franchise they blurred their message, concentrating on defending the status quo. The two issues that most directly confronted the Commando, however, were those of open membership and the use of extra-parliamentary means of opposition. The Cape Commando was non-racial, with a large coloured membership,³³ but elsewhere it was a white organisation with racial exclusivity the norm, as one of its branches stated: ‘We are South Africans and as such the colour bar is an accepted part of our lives.’³⁴

Alex Hepple, a senior figure in the 1953 electoral pact between the UP, the Torch Commando and the Labour Party he then led, later wrote: ‘The Government kept attention focused on the race issue and the Torch Commando eventually faltered at this hurdle … it fought on one flank against the curtailment of the political rights of the coloureds and on the other lined up with the forces of discrimination.’³⁵

Both the CRL and the Commando also had to confront the issue of extra-parliamentary action, which emerged as a dividing line between radical and liberal opponents of the government. Following the Cape Town violence, according to Hepple, the UP exerted ‘political influence and intrigue’ to bring the Commando within its ambit.³⁶ The removal of Legion members from the Commando was a key element in this process; following their departure, the Commando confined itself to purely electoral work. In doing so, of course, the essence of its appeal – its massive extra-parliamentary presence, the drama of its protests, the robust rhetoric – was destroyed.

The UP successfully defused any possible challenge from the Commando and swallowed it whole, pausing only to spit out those few whites who would later populate the Liberal Party, the Union Federal Party and the Congress of Democrats. By mid-1952 radical whites had declared the Torch Commando dead, with liberals not too far behind.³⁷

The Defiance Campaign

As the Torch Commando faded from the political scene its place was taken by the Defiance Campaign, a direct intrusion by the Congress movement into the political calculations of white South Africans, including those who opposed apartheid. The campaign generated a flurry of ideological and strategic debate among radical and liberal whites and served to crystallise divisions between the two as support for the campaign deepened, numbers of resisters increased, and Congress leaders called for full white identification with their aims and their methods.

Full equality and extra-parliamentary methods became the overt dividing line between the South African Congress of Democrats, the white wing of the Congress Alliance, and the non-racial Liberal Party. Under the surface anti-communism remained an important factor dividing the two.

The Defiance Campaign was launched on 6 April 1952, the tercentenary of Van Riebeeck’s landing at the Cape. Rather than demanding the immediate destruction of the entire racist/ apartheid state, the organisers highlighted six specific laws – the Group Areas Act, the Bantu Authorities Act, the Suppression of Communism Act, the Stock Limitation Act, the pass laws and the Separate Representation of Voters Act – in order to facilitate their easier repeal.

Initial responses from white liberals – still hoping to influence the UP – were not encouraging. The SAIRR reacted by ‘deploring’ the ‘insensitivity’ of the date chosen by the organisers, and criticised the ANC for ‘unrealistically demand[ing] the immediate abolition’ of the six statutes, concluding that it ‘… shares with the Prime Minister his concern that public order must be maintained and appreciates the reasons that prompt him to declare that any outbreak of violence must be firmly met’,³⁸ a statement that is unlikely to have done much for hopes for full white identification with the struggle.

Others, however, were less reactionary. Some liberals saw the gradualist approach as evidence of common ground with the ANC. Leading liberal theoretician Leo Kuper sought to persuade his more conservative colleagues that supporting incremental change was preferable to confronting the reality of full, immediate equality for all:

No immediate claim is made for direct political representation and for full democratic rights, which are held out as goals for the future. The time element is thus conceived in the spirit of liberalism. It is evolutionary.³⁹

The Defiance Campaign unfolded in tandem with legal setbacks suffered by the NP government in its disenfranchisement battle as well as with a new optimism on the part of the UP after it had ingested the Torch Commando. After a slow start the campaign grew in size and popular appeal (among blacks) until, by the end of 1952, more than 8 000 volunteers had been imprisoned. The government responded with increased repression, including the introduction of whipping for defiers.

As the campaign continued anti-white sentiment grew. The sentences passed on resisters became harsher, and campaign organiser Joe Matthews, then president of the ANC Youth League (ANCYL), warned of the dangers of black racism, noting, in October 1952, that ‘the attitude of those who have been to jail is uncompromisingly opposed to any talks with the whites unless all our demands are going to be met’.⁴⁰ At the same time, whites supportive of the Defiance Campaign began agitating for a greater role than fund-raising or writing letters of support to the press.

This pressure increased markedly when Patrick Duncan, son of a former Governor-General, offered his services to the campaign organisers.⁴¹Duncan’s offer guaranteed massive publicity for the campaign but, probably more importantly, it promised to help counter its increasingly racial nature. As Planning Council member Yusuf Cachalia put it, ‘Pat’s offer to defy came as a gift from heaven: it stopped the campaign becoming racial’.⁴²

Duncan’s offer was replicated by other (less high-profile) whites in Cape Town, where Lucas Phillips, chairperson of the ANC in the Western Cape, stated: ‘Our reason for accepting Europeans into the movement is to dispel the idea among many Africans that all Whites are oppressors.’⁴³

In early December a large crowd, which included Duncan and six other whites, entered Germiston location without a permit and, after making speeches and singing freedom songs, were duly arrested.⁴⁴ At the same time, four young white resisters – Albie Sachs, Mary Butcher, Arnold Harrison and Hymie Rochman – broke post office apartheid laws in Cape Town by using the counter set aside for blacks. A week later Arnold Selby of the Textile Workers’ Union did the same.

The effects of the Defiance Campaign

The Defiance Campaign triggered important political developments among anti-apartheid whites, among whom its influence grew in proportion to the campaign itself. In response to ANC–SAIC calls for white support, the white liberal/ left began to reveal ideological fractures in its commitment to the Congress-led struggle. Leading FRAC members participated in planning the campaign while the Springbok Legion endorsed it and called on the Torch Commando to join the ANC and SAIC in organising a national strike.⁴⁵ The hostility evinced by the SAIRR is noted above.

Meanwhile, liberals were trying to plot their own path between the contending forces. In a statement written by Margaret Ballinger and published in October 1952, twenty-two leading liberals – including author Alan Paton, Bishop Trevor Huddleston and others – called for a positive white response to the Defiance Campaign, which they described as ‘clearly no sudden impulse … [led] by men who are acknowledged leaders among Africans and Indians’.⁴⁶

The statement, around which the initial organisation of the Liberal Party took place in 1952/3, continued:

We believe that it is imperative that South Africa should now adopt a policy that will attract the support of educated, politically conscious non-Europeans by offering them a reasonable status in our society. This can be done by a revival of the liberal tradition which prevailed for so many years with such successful results in the Cape Colony.⁴⁷

The statement called for a policy of ‘equal rights for all civilised men, and equal opportunity for all to become civilised’. At the same time, it called on Congress leaders ‘to recognise that it will take time and patience substantially to improve the present position’. Finally, with an eye on the UP, the twenty-two offered their proposal ‘in the hope that it will make negotiations possible and their success probable’.⁴⁸

Go slow, make modest demands, be realistic, don’t rock the boat – the Ballinger statement was a perfect distillation of the somewhat effete liberalism of the early 1950s, itself ‘the fag end of nineteenth-century’ Cape liberalism. E M Forster (from whom the phrase is borrowed), writing at the same time (1951), had said:

[I am] an individualist and a liberal who has found liberalism crumbling beneath him and at first felt ashamed. Then, looking around, he decided there was no reason for shame, since other people, whatever they felt, were equally insecure… I am actually what my age and my upbringing have made me – a bourgeois who adheres to the British constitution…⁴⁹

South African liberalism – and many liberals, black and white, though by no means all – had no such constitution to cling to. But many would be reinvigorated by their engagement with African nationalism and black resistance politics. Their party and policies would be radicalised and a far more muscular liberalism would emerge, briefly, as a result.

By late 1952, with more than 3 000 defiers already arrested, it looked as though liberals could score an important victory through their self-appointed role as go-between. In November of that year informal discussions began between the congresses and the UP. ANC Secretary-General Walter Sisulu was approached by leading UP and Torch Commando members, directors of the Oppenheimer Trust and others.⁵⁰ Influenced by growing white concern about the Defiance Campaign and the announcement of the 1953 general election, and according to John Cope, UP MP and editor of the liberal magazine Forum, the UP approached Congress leaders:

... to discover what their terms would be for calling off the passive resistance campaign on the eve of the parliamentary general election. Such a move, it was considered, would have a reassuring effect on the white electorate which was becoming anxious about the defiance campaign. It would be to the advantage of the United Party to demonstrate that it could influence non-white opinion.⁵¹

According to Cope, the ANC offered to end the Defiance Campaign in exchange for a public statement from the UP that it would repeal the six laws:

… the A.N.C. leaders did not ask for these things as a condition for calling off the passive resistance campaign. All they demanded was that the United Party, if it came to power, should undertake publicly to halt the tide of apartheid and set the flow in the opposite direction.⁵²

By the end of November, according to Joe Matthews, Ernest Oppenheimer – ‘the highest official in the Millionaire organisation that is behind a great deal of U.P. activity’ – had joined ‘the wooing of Congress’.⁵³ Youth League leaders were involved on multiple fronts – organising the Defiance Campaign, talking to the UP about conditions for possibly calling it off – and very possibly giving out mixed signals in so doing. In the end, this counted for little, as a growing right-wing revolt within the UP scuppered any possible deal with the ANC. In order to pacify the party, UP leader J G N Strauss reaffirmed his commitment to ‘white leadership with justice’ and a programme scarcely distinguishable from that of the National Party, with the exception that the UP accepted that the constitution was sacrosanct. The tentative UP–ANC discussions came to an abrupt end.

The parting of the ways

Calls for white support for the liberation struggle had been a strong theme of ANC and SAIC propaganda in the late 1940s. In 1947 the SAIC’s Monty Naicker called for the creation of a new party to carry the struggle to white voters. At the same time he insisted that ‘a progressive party can only be forged by unity among all progressive European Organisations’.⁵⁴ At a superficial level, white support for the Defiance Campaign, including the participation of whites with no past communist links, and the growing distance between liberals and the UP (especially after talks with the ANC ended abruptly), suggested that such unity was possible.

Despite a common class background, white liberals and radicals were deeply divided by ideology and belonged to a series of small, separate and often hostile organisations and discussion groups. Relations between and among white liberals and radicals (themselves split into Marxist, Communist, Trotskyist and other splinter groups) were increasingly antagonistic, exacerbated by the NP coming to power and the growing importance of African nationalism.

Through an ideological attack and legislative onslaught on all opposition as traitorous, the government fuelled liberal anti-communism. The Suppression of Communism Act – described by Walker as providing ‘almost dictatorial powers to deal decisively with anyone who was even faintly tinctured Red’⁵⁵ – placed liberals in an awkward position – they supported the aim but not the method of the legislation. Edgar Brookes claimed: ‘the terms “Liberal” and “Communist” are as separate as fire and water … You could not slander a Liberal more than by calling him a Communist’. He warned that liberals were being placed in danger since ex-communists would henceforth attempt to act ‘under the wings’ of liberal organisations.⁵⁶

The Cape Argus reported the breakdown of a CRL meeting attended by some 2 000 people, called to oppose the Suppression of Communism Bill, in May 1950. One of the speakers stated that the struggle against communism would go on with or without the Bill, and that the CPSA was ‘Cominform-controlled’. Guest speaker and CPSA MP Sam Kahn objected, and the meeting descended into ‘uproar’ and some physical exchanges.⁵⁷

The dissolution of the CPSA in June 1950 increased liberal suspicion of communist infiltration of their organisations, and liberal groups formed between 1951 and 1953 adopted an anti-communist ‘screening’ clause. Hostility grew in the 1950s towards the brand of ‘existing socialism’ and the close links between the disbanded CPSA and the USSR. Winifred Hoernlé, SAIRR president in 1950, stated: ‘In our own day we have seen Russia develop first into a communist state … From that time it has developed into a police state … Man in all the areas controlled by the Russian Communists is subservient to the state in all the phases of his life.’⁵⁸

The notion of a Soviet-controlled South African communist party was commonly accepted among South African liberals and confirmed for them by such works as Eddie Roux’s biography of CPSA founder S P Bunting and by Roux’s history of the liberation struggle, Time Longer Than Rope, in which he claimed the CPSA repeatedly subordinated ‘the South African struggle to the needs of the world situation’.⁵⁹ Coupled with the internal vicissitudes of the CPSA in the 1930s and early 1940s, the policy changes, the shift from opposing to supporting the Second World War following Soviet foreign policy dictates, and the purges and loss of membership, clearly projected the image of a party following Comintern directives rather than domestic demands. Of course this should have been balanced against the history of the party in organising among the poor, working alongside nationalist organisations supporting political demands and pushing the frontiers of racial integration, but often it was not.

Negative perceptions of the Communist Party were pervasive within South Africa, as they were beyond its borders. Such views were exacerbated by the anti-CPSA activities of former party members such as Hymie Basner.⁶⁰ In the 1950s, suspicion and hostility of the CPSA would continue to be fuelled by former CPSA members who joined the Liberal Party, notably Jock Isacowitz and Eddie Roux.

Roux is said to have told stories of an attempt by KGB agents to assassinate him after the 1928 Comintern meeting (not mentioned in any of his published works), while Isacowitz warned liberals that they would be outmanoeuvred by former CPSA members if they attempted to co-operate with SACOD.⁶¹

As late as 1997, Liberal Party member Randolph Vigne would still write breathlessly of ‘Isacowitz’s experienced eye’ being able to ‘instantly identif[y] … a front for the banned Communist Party of South Africa’ and ‘warn … his liberal colleagues accordingly’.⁶² The dissolution of the CPSA is discussed in the next chapter and, as we shall see, it was more the result of cock-up than conspiracy. The fear of communist infiltration was, nonetheless, a reality, and an odd backhand compliment to the importance of the party in working with and for Africans in South Africa.

The ANC and the SAIC – perhaps somewhat naïve about the infighting among potential white allies – expected a significant response to their appeal for a white congress.⁶³ The precise role that whites would play within the Congress movement was unclear; Joe Matthews stated simply: ‘The Whites will have to form a party that is prepared to make definite changes or join Congress’ – although prior to SACOD there was no way whites could ‘join Congress’.⁶⁴

The Defiance Campaign Planning Council discussed the issue of white participation and, in November 1952, called a meeting at Darragh Hall in Johannesburg to capitalise on white support for the campaign. Some 300 whites attended the meeting, which was chaired by former CPSA member Bram Fischer. Although well-known liberals such as the Ballingers, Marion Friedman and others attended, many of those present were former CPSA members.

The Darragh Hall meeting proved to be a turning point in the development of white opposition to apartheid. But there are many memories, and thus many versions, of why this was so. Many liberals, as is clear from the Vigne quotation above, suspected a communist plot as they entered the room and left convinced of it. Senior liberals had no intention of being too closely identified with the Congress movement.

But if liberals were wary of being duped by communists, a lot of former CPSA members had no desire to work with liberals, whom they scorned for being unable to embrace equality and freedom for all. Former communists such as Rusty Bernstein came to the meeting determined to respond to the ANC call for whites to ‘take up their share of the burden’ and poured scorn on liberal suggestions from the floor for bridge-building afternoons in ‘a park where black nannies and domestic servants could get together in their afternoons off ’.⁶⁵ But they too had come to the meeting determined to do the opposite to the liberals – to respond positively to the Congress call for white support. Both entered the room with an idée fixe about the other, and both left with it confirmed.

ANCYL Africanists such as Tambo and Sisulu finally saw the divisions between liberal and radical whites in a very immediate fashion. Callinicos quotes Walter Sisulu on Tambo’s speech at the meeting:

This speech of OR [Tambo] created a terrific impression on me. I have no way of describing it. You take a thing by the tail. And you expose it. OR, in his artistic way of speaking, created a tremendous impression. Not only to me, but to the people who were there. Because he has a way – you take a snake by the tail and you are exposing its head.⁶⁶

The meeting was also addressed by Yusuf Cachalia, who called for a progressive white grouping ‘to co-operate with us, to be supportive … to assist us in bringing justice to this country’.⁶⁷ The precise form of the organisation was left to the meeting, the only condition being that it should be fully committed to the Congress ideal of equal rights for all. By implication, it would also have to support the methods used by the Congress movement. It seems clear that Sisulu and Tambo felt they had seen the head of the liberal snake: but liberals saw a communist one. At the meeting, divisions and hostilities between white liberals and radicals became clear, and the gap between them was organisationally fixed; it would remain so for decades.

White responses to the Defiance Campaign had revealed differences previously obscured by common anti-fascist and later anti-Nationalist sentiment. Anti-apartheid whites faced a hostile NP government and an ANC and SAIC increasingly determined to use widespread extra-parliamentary mobilisation to achieve full and immediate equality.

The ANC–SAIC demand for universal suffrage, previously only endorsed by the CPSA, proved an immediate and intractable stumbling block. Margaret Ballinger, acting as liberal spokesperson, rejected the universal franchise out of hand.⁶⁸ As a secondary issue, liberals rejected the idea of a white congress working in a multiracial Alliance, calling rather for an ‘all-in’ congress. This was the first time non-racial/multiracial organisational forms were cited as an issue; as the decade unfolded the issue would reflect deep ideological differences. Finally, with considerable liberal support, Margaret Ballinger refused to co-operate with the large number of former CPSA members present. This was later explained by liberal claims that white communists ‘packed’ the Darragh Hall meeting and controlled proceedings.⁶⁹ Equal rights and extra-parliamentary methods divided radical from liberal whites; anti-communism supplied the fixative that cemented the distance between them.

The Darragh Hall meeting was followed by three further meetings at which attempts were made to find a compromise solution which would allow the creation of a combined liberal/ left organisation.⁷⁰ The failure of these discussions was followed by the formation of SACOD, which was committed to standing ‘for equal political rights and economic opportunities for all South Africans, irrespective of race, colour or sex: and win for all South Africans the freedom of speech, assembly, movement and organisation’.⁷¹

By the end of 1952 radical and liberal whites had irrevocably split. The SAIC’s Yusuf Dadoo had called for an alliance between the ANC and the SAIC on the one hand and the UP–Torch Commando–Labour Party election partners on the other, stating: ‘Intra-parliamentary struggle is played out. It is now for the masses of the people to act.’⁷²

For many liberals, however, this was unthinkable; the closeness of extra-parliamentary to revolutionary strategies, coupled with the prominent role of former communists, closed the matter. Liberals who attended the Darragh Hall meeting rejected the call to operate outside Parliament as an ally of the ANC and SAIC and returned to the UP fold in time for the 1953 general election – and another routing at the polls.

Radical whites in Johannesburg joined SACOD, where a Founding Committee was elected to draw up a constitution and programme of action.⁷³ In 1953 SACOD became a full and equal partner of the Congress Alliance. As Bernstein noted more than forty years later: ‘Personalities contributed to the COD-Liberal split, but its essence was political and thus unavoidable.’

In 1953 the Liberal Party was launched, initially committed to a qualified franchise and insisting on the use of parliamentary and/ or constitutional methods – though, by the time of its demise in 1968, its policies would be indistinguishable from those of the white ‘radicals’ of 1953. From its inception, white opposition to apartheid was fragmented and internally riven by suspicion, hostility and contestation; personality differences added spice to this already potent brew.

The split divided the already small white opposition to apartheid and diminished its impact on the course of political events, then and also into the post-apartheid era.⁷⁴