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Reports from the progressive press
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200 EUROPEANS MEET WITH DEFIANCE LEADERS
Walter Sisulu, Yosuf Cachalia and Oliver Tambo, on behalf of the Defiance Campaign, the African National Congress and the South African Indian Congresses, emphasised that the campaign was not directed against any racial group. Its basic purpose is to achieve the recognition of non-Europeans as human beings by the peaceful method of passive resistance. Mr Tambo said that a clause in the constitutions of both Congresses pledges them to work for the ideal of full democratic rights for all South Africans. The silence of European democrats to the challenge of the issues involved in the Defiance Campaign is being construed by non-Europeans as acquiescence in and approval of the government’s policies. This is rapidly creating the belief among large numbers of non-Europeans that all whites are hostile to them and their aspirations and that the situation is being transformed into a white versus non-white struggle.
(Advance, 27 November 1952)
AMENDMENT TO THE SUPPRESSION OF COMMUNISM ACT TO EVADE THE APPELLATE DIVISION’S JUDGEMENT
“The highest court in the land has affirmed the simple and universally acknowledged principle that a man should not be condemned unheard. It is deeply disturbing that the Minister’s immediate response should be to repudiate that principle and seek to arm himself with new powers to override it. I protest, and I think all democrats should protest too.”
(Advance, 10 December 1952)
THE CONGRESS OF THE PEOPLE
Referring to allegations in a press statement by Brigadier Rademeyer following last week’s ejection of the CID from the Transvaal preparatory conference for the Congress of the People, Mr Tambo, a member of the National Action Council organising the Congress, told a press conference that the Acting Police Commissioner’s statements were uncalled for, misleading and possibly irregular from a legal viewpoint.
“Brigadier Rademeyer’s statement implies that this organisation is planning a revolution and to overthrow the state by force. Such statements are utterly misleading as to the purpose and objects of the sponsoring organisations. The composition and objects of these organisation were made known to the country and to the world … The Congress of the People has been created for an altogether lawful purpose.”
Mr Tambo declined to comment further on Brigadier Rademeyer’s statements in so far as they related to a sub judice matter. “Our attorneys’ attention has been drawn to them and they will take the necessary steps.”
He did, however, draw attention sharply to the “increasing tendency of the police authorities to issue statements on political movements and on meetings of lawful organisation. This tendency was unprecedented in South Africa, caused considerable unrest and indicated the approach of a police state.”
(Advance, 5 August 1954)
THE BANTU EDUCATION ACT
“When Verwoerd says that children who boycott Bantu Education schools will lose their places, which will be filled by others, he forgets to ask himself: Who will these others be? Does he perhaps imagine African parents will be eager to send their offspring to schools for apartheid, where the doctrine of African inferiority will be imprinted on their impressionable minds? The ANC is preparing instructions of all its branches on the implementation of the resolution condemning Bantu Education.
“The African people are not going to be intimidated by Dr Verwoerd’s statement. He comments so early after the passing of the resolution because he is worried at the determined opposition to his schemes. To warn the parents about their children being replaced by other children when withdrawn is to miss the point that we are going to stop both those who are attending school, as well as those who are not yet attending school from doing so. We trust that most of the churches will continue to support us on this issue, as they have done on past issues, since it is clear that this education is incompatible with Christian precepts.”
(New Age, 6 January 1955)
PERSECUTION UNDER THE PASS LAWS
“The large-scale pass arrests, the periodic swoops on Africans for passes, are coming to be accepted by far too many white South Africans as the ‘normal’ thing. Not a day passes but raiding parties scour Johannesburg and other large cities to make arrests, and although the pass laws have always been one of the most hated and arduous forms of oppression imposed on Africans, the dragnet for victims has never been cast so wide, the laws so unsympathetically administered, and the victims of these inhuman laws so numerous.
“Issued just as the government has announced a Bill to amend the Abolition of Passes and Co-ordination of Documents Act (the amendment tightens up loopholes in the Act and stipulates that ‘foreign natives’, including those from the Protectorates, carry a separate type of reference book) this statement recalls that at the time of the introduction of the law in 1952 it challenged the bluff of the Nationalists that this law was really to ‘abolish’ passes. Its warning that the new Act was a more vicious application of the pass restrictions than ever before has been borne out by events in the last three years.
“In the period that the provisions of the new law have been applied, countless people in many parts of the country have been ruthlessly persecuted and harried; men and women removed from their homes in urban areas; workers refused permission to enter urban areas from rural areas; and countless more subjected to arrest, enquiry and detention. Young men leaving school and anxious to enter jobs in industry are refused permission to do so and are endorsed out of the urban areas. In the towns they are forced to live the life of the hunted, continually trying to avoid the roving pick-up van.
“Living in the cities has become a nightmare for all Africans of pass-bearing age, as night and day police in plain clothes are stationed on street corners, near pass offices, outside stations; are constantly searching in locations and suburbs, and busy trapping passing Africans. A never-ending manhunt for pass offenders is being conducted in South Africa. Among the thousands detained every day for pass offences or investigation are many Africans in employment, who subsequently lose their jobs after being kept in prison cells pending investigation or trial on some petty pass infringement. No worker may accept employment unless he has the permission of the Labour Bureau and the working of the bureaux ensure that Africans have to accept work earmarked for them, even if they can independently find work at higher pay or work of a more skilled nature. A man once registered at the bureaux in some labouring category is pegged in that category for a lifetime. Officials at the pass offices are ‘little Hitlers’ and authorities unto themselves, with the power to make snap decisions which will determine the future of individuals and whole families. In only very rare cases is there any appeal from the decisions of the officials.
“The pass laws are now openly being used as a form of political persecution and intimidation.
“During the school boycott the Minister of Native Affairs threatened all school boys over the age of 16, who did not return to school by his appointed date, with compulsory registration as work-seekers and deportation to labour colonies if they did not find employment.
“Local authorities are also using the pass laws to persecute active ANC members. When it is found impossible to arrest them on any more serious charge, they are apprehended for non-payment of poll tax, of a contravention of permit regulations or some minor offence.
“Only last week the Secretary for Native Affairs informed the Cape Town City Council that under the Urban Areas Act children were forbidden to enter and remain in urban areas beyond the 72 hour limit, and that African children from country areas should therefore not be admitted to schools in the towns.
“The courts are clogged with pass cases. ‘Crime figures’ in the Union have shot up alarmingly, the monthly figures of convictions having trebled since 1936. But an examination of these figures shows that convictions for serious crime, theft, drunkenness and assault have not risen startlingly, and that the increase is in the number of convictions under the pass and permit laws.
“Investigations under section 10 and 14 of the Urban Areas Act, which might result in banishment from urban areas, impose the utmost hardship on Africans. The ANC demands the total abolition of the pass laws. It also calls on its branches to protest at the constant raids; to be vigilant for the people’s rights; to fight every endorsement out of the urban areas; to support the Cape campaign against the expulsion of African women; to link all campaigning, and in particular preparations for the forthcoming Congress of the People with the pass laws; and to increasingly fight against these laws which are a cornerstone of apartheid oppression.”
(New Age, 12 May 1955)
EVERY AFRICAN AGAINST APARTHEID
“The slogan of the conference might well be ‘Every African Against Apartheid’. These are days of grave crisis for the African people. The Verwoerd bills of the last session of Parliament – the amendment to the Urban Areas Act and the Native Administration Act and the Prohibition Interdicts Act – are new Acts of tyranny which climax painful years in which this government has piled one injustice after another upon our people.
“The anti-apartheid conference initiated by the Federation Interdenominational Ministers is most timely and should he welcomed throughout the land. I fully support the idea of this conference.
“Many things still divide us but the threat to our existence and our rights must now bring us together. Petty differences among the African people and their organisations where they exist must be submerged in the interests of a firm unity in the face of attack by the Nationalists. Every African must clearly understand that apartheid means permanent inferiority and acceptance of any apartheid scheme, whether it goes by the name of ‘separate development’ or any other label means the abdication of our human rights.
“Conference must not be a mere talking shop. From its sessions must grow a new understanding and determination to fight for the basic civil liberties that are the birthright of all peoples – against the threats to the independence of the churches from state control and government interference; against arbitrary deportations and exilings; against the slamming of the doors of the courts of law in our faces; against the never-ending uprooting and removals of our people and the pinpricks and humiliations which are our daily experience under the system of apartheid.
“From this conference should emerge a united people attempting not to form themselves into a single body, but to forge ways and means for all the varied organisations and representative groups of our people to act together for the common interest, against attacks on us and for our rights.”
(New Age, 19 July 1956)
NOT AIMED AT WHITES OR AFRIKANERS
Mr Tambo: The economic boycott is not aimed at whites or Afrikaners as such. Anti-Nationalist Afrikaners and other Europeans are called on to join the boycott.
New Age: Is a further list of products to be boycotted likely to be released?
Mr Tambo: We have announced the first list. After full investigation, additions will be made and released at suitable stages of the campaign.
New Age: Is this a national boycott?
Mr Tambo: Yes, it offers an opportunity to the millions of people in all parts of the country to participate by an act of self-denial in a nationwide protest against the arrogance of the Nationalists and their utter contempt for the rights of individuals.
New Age: What must shopkeepers who presently sell these goods on the boycott list do?
Mr Tambo: The boycott commences on 10 June. This gives shopkeepers reasonable notice to dispose of and to make no further orders for the affected goods. There is certainly no intention to involve them in losses. On the other hand we do not believe that they will be acting in their interests if they attempt to oppose, ignore or in any way to undermine the campaign.
New Age: Is the boycott appeal directed only to members of the ANC?
Mr Tambo: The campaign is being conducted jointly by the ANC together with anti-Nationalist organisations of Europeans, Indians, coloured people and trade unions. An appeal is made to all members of the public, including those who do not support the full aims of the Congress Alliance, to observe the boycott as a token of protest against government policy.
New Age: Is this boycott anti-white or anti-Afrikaner? At whom is the boycott aimed?
Mr Tambo: The boycott is not aimed at whites or Afrikaners as such. The Nationalist Party has gone out of its way to set up financial and business ventures as a part of its political plan. It is only such enterprises that will be affected by the boycott. The Congress boycott sub-committee includes European representatives and calls upon anti-Nationalist Afrikaners and other Europeans to join the boycott. The Congress movement is strongly opposed, on principle, to any form of racialism.
New Age: Critics of the campaign have suggested that there are many other ways of protest open to the people and that a boycott of some Nationalist goods is an ineffective method of protest. Any comment?
Mr Tambo: There are, of course, many other ways and our organisation is most active in advocating and pursuing such methods. The boycott does not clash with other kinds of political activity. In the course of conducting the campaign our organisations will endeavour to persuade the people of the reasons for not buying the listed products. This is valuable educational and political work.
I do not think the economic boycott could be described as “ineffective”. Although one does not expect the government to fall overnight as a result, hitting Nationalists in the sensitive region of the pocket may bring them to their senses more effectively than many more conventional protests which they have ignored.
(New Age, 6 June 1957)
EVIDENCE TO COMMISSION ON THE DUBE RIOTS
Tribalism has failed throughout history and it is bound to fail here as well. To introduce tribalism in the urban areas is to act against the natural course of the forces of social change.
A memorandum submitted by the ANC stated that the causes of the Dube riots were ethnic grouping and the general policy of racialism; the sense of dissatisfaction, discontent and frustration under which Africans live as a result of discriminatory and repressive laws operating against them; the miserable wages paid to African workers; the fact that Africans are constantly being hunted and hounded by the police in connection with petty offences, namely pass laws and poll tax, a practice which does not allow the Africans to live the lives of normal human beings; and the migratory labour policy, which makes the African workers temporary sojourners in the urban areas with no permanent homes.
Asked to suggest what should be done, Mr Tambo said that the evils brought by the migratory labour system could be reduced to a minimum by the encouragement of a settled community in which the worker lived with his family in the area of his employment. The employment could be provided either by the employer or by the employee, if he was paid adequate wages.
Q – Would you say that the tribal fights that have been going on in the Transkei are due to the operation of discriminatory laws?
A – We are not saying that there can be no fights between tribal groups except as a result of oppressive laws. But what we say is that in this instance tribal fights between ethnic groups are likely to occur frequently because of the effects on the people of these laws.
Mr Tambo was closely questioned in connection with the Congress statement that the African people are mishandled by the police, insulted and beaten up and that they finally land in gaol for no fault of their own, or for the most trivial reasons. The partial attitude of the police is a major contributory cause to the tension and resultant violence now under enquiry.
Q – Why do you say the police are partial? It is one thing to attack the police for being incompetent but quite another to say that they are partial. Just what do you mean?
A – That is the feeling of the people.
Q – Yes, people who are misguided and misinformed can say that, but what do you yourself say? Do you agree with that statement?
A – I cannot disassociate myself from the statement.
Q – Can you tell us why?
A – The position is this. Firstly, the police should have expected that there would be trouble at Mofolo North, which is a Zulu area, and they should not have taken the procession through Mofolo North. They could have taken a different route. For instance, the route they took on their return from the cemetery. When the police reached Mofolo North there was no necessity for the police to shoot.
Q – But we have it on record that the Zulus adopted a threatening attitude.
A – That is precisely our point. The police fired at people because they showed an attitude.
Q – When the police officer spoke to the leader of the Zulus asking him to disperse his people, the leader of the Zulus raised the weapon he was carrying and was about to strike when the police officer fired at him.
A – If that evidence is correct, there was no necessity for the police officer to shoot.
Q – The evidence is that the Zulus threw stones at the police.
A – Yes, that is the mystery. According to the evidence not a single policeman, not a single Mosotho was struck by a stone, and our point is that in these circumstances the shooting by the police was absolutely uncalled for if they were being impartial peace-makers.
Q – How does your organisation arrive at the conclusion that the discriminatory laws have resulted in a clash between the Zulus and the Basutos?
A – Take for instance the pass laws that have been a subject of protest by Africans ever since they were introduced. And far from being abolished, they have been intensified and made applicable even to women. Hundreds of thousands of Africans have been arrested under the pass laws and their protests have yielded no results whatsoever. They have been placed in a position where they feel they have no redress for their grievances. The only redress is that they get arrested. Therefore their life now is not a life in which grievances are redressed by discussion and negotiation.
(New Age, 27 February 1958)
VERWOERD CANNOT KILL THE SPIRIT OF THE PEOPLE
“The position of the masses in South Africa is akin to slavery. There is no such thing as a home for our people. Jobs are being reserved for whites and Africans are being forced on to farms as cheap labour.
“But every discriminatory law passed, every hardship imposed on the people has not been able to kill their spirit to continue with the just struggle to make South Africa a democracy where every section of the population will enjoy freedom.
“Speaking about the future of South Africa to the Provincial Conference of the Natal ANC, Mr Tambo said that Verwoerd would deal with the country and its people as he had done with Zeerust. The murders, the killings, the mass arrests of people and the banishing of chiefs and leaders … those were the consequences of Verwoerd’s policies. His record in dealing with the people of Zeerust and Sekhukhuneland had earned him the leadership of the Nationalist Party and the Premiership. The Nats say ‘South Africa must be made safe for the whites’. Their position as masters over the non-Europeans must be secured at all costs. To achieve this end we have the Bantu Education Act, passes for women, Bantu Authorities, the Group Areas Act and a host of other oppressive laws.
“Our people’s opposition to oppression, discrimination and slavery had given rise to mass arrests and mass trials such as the Treason Trial. Thousands of people were being sent to gaol for their opposition to tyranny. These are good people made into criminals by government policy. Mr Tambo condemned the informers and spies who were trying to destroy the people’s movement. These people were trying to sow discord at a time when the people’s leaders were facing a capital charge of treason.
“The government’s policy affects us all and we should therefore face the enemy together. A united struggle is our best answer to apartheid, which threatens to destroy South Africa. We have the task of bringing peace and happiness to all the people of this land.”
(New Age, 10 October 1958)
ANC STANDS BY THE ALLIANCE WITH CONGRESS OF DEMOCRATS
“It would be surprising and unnatural if the policy of the ANC provoked no criticism from any source whatsoever. Indeed, recognising that the ANC is anything but infallible, its leaders have not infrequently gone out of their way to invite criticism and comment on matters appertaining to the struggle and have as often urged free and frank discussion at all levels of the organisational structure.
“Mistaking this attitude on the part of the ANC leadership for an invitation to them to indulge in puerile pranks, the edition reporters and ‘Africanist’ correspondents of the World have been pouring out cheap abuse about the ANC being controlled by the Congress of Democrats.
“Others, employing the columns of Contact, the Liberal Party organ, and Indian Opinion have joined the chorus, though they failed to stop at the level of the World.
“In isolated cases public speakers have attacked the alliance of the ANC with the Congress of Democrats not on the ground of control of the one by the other, but because COD is ‘an extreme leftist organ’ and ‘does not honour Western civilisation or Christian values’.”
1949 PROGRAMME
“The adoption by the ANC of the 1949 Programme of Action was in large measure an answer to the vicious pace at which the Nationalist government was attacking the democratic rights, particularly of the African people. The 1948 general election ushered in a new political era in which the ANC, if it was to fulfil its historic task, was called upon to go into action on a militant programme.
“It says much to the credit of the ANC that it has honoured the 1949 decision to embark upon mass action, and in the political conflict that mark the period from early 1950, its leaders have been banned, banished, deported, arrested and persecuted, it has been declared illegal in certain areas and in others the right of assembly has been severely curtailed. In spite of all this the ANC has not abandoned the fight, nor have its leaders retreated to take shelter behind ideological platitudes.
“The Nationalist attack was not concentrated on the African people. The Suppression of Communism Act affected every democrat and served as a barrage to keep off the forces of democracy whilst anti-democratic legislation was being passed and enforced.
“The Defiance Campaign uncovered and produced a large body of people of all races, in all parts of the world, who were sympathetic to the cause of the non-European people and of democracy. There was at the time a plan for co-operation between the main non-European political organisations only. Following the lessons of the Defiance Campaign, the need was felt for an organisation through which the ANC and other non-European bodies could make contact with those whites who were prepared to join the non-European in their fight for freedom and democracy.
“In the absence of an organised body of European opinion openly and publicly proclaiming its opposition to the government’s racialist policies and supporting the non-European cause, the political conflict was developing a dangerously black versus white complexion. Such a situation no doubt suited the present government, but it did not suit the ANC nor the movement for liberation, and had to be avoided.
“It was to a packed meeting of Europeans in 1952 that leaders of the ANC and the SAIC appealed for an organisation that would take its stand alongside the three main non-European organisations in their resistance to Nationalist tyranny, which was preparing to arm itself during the 1953 session of Parliament with the Criminal Law Amendment Act and the Public Safety Act, in addition to the Suppression of Communism Act. In response to the appeal, those Europeans who saw the approaching danger to South Africa and to democracy, admitted the justice of our cause and had the courage to identify themselves with that cause, came forward to found the South African Congress of Democrats. Whether they were communists or anti-communists was immaterial. In any event, in terms of the Suppression of Communism Act everybody was a ‘communist’ who disliked the Nationalist government’s policies and said so.
“Whether the men and women who came together as the COD did, or did not, honour Western civilisation or Christian values would have been difficult to say, assuming the question was relevant. The Nationalist government has already claimed that it is protecting Western civilisation and is acting in the name of Christianity. The present leader of the Nationalist Party, Dr Verwoerd, claims that God chose him as Prime Minister and God is supposed to have done this in spite of the sordid tale of misery and disaster which forms part of the record of Dr Verwoerd’s administration and the Department of Native Affairs.
“One might well ask, what would have been the fate of ‘Western’ civilisation if England had withdrawn from the last war when Russia joined the Allies against Germany? Or if America had stayed out of the war because communist Russia was in it?”
WHO CONTROLS WHOM?
“Let us examine the other objection to the alliance of the Congresses, namely that the Congress of Democrats controls the ANC. Can it be said that there is anything which, but for its association or alliance with the COD, the ANC would have done or refrained from doing? It surely cannot be suggested that the ANC would not have conducted a militant struggle against oppression. The main feature of the 1949, annual conference of the ANC was its adoption of a Programme of Action, not a programme of inaction, and in taking this decision, the ANC was not influenced or directed by any other organisation, although, as indicated earlier, it was largely influenced by the politics of the Nationalist Party government. And what the ANC has done since 1949, both before and after the formation of COD, has been to carry out its decisions to embark on militant action.
“It is true that other aspects of the 1949 Programme have not been carried out. These are certainly less hazardous than ‘mass action’ and are no doubt more attractive to those who cannot but have regard to considerations of risk and safety. In fact, it is significant that a large percentage of the brave and courageous men who are busy carrying out a programmed action against COD have had little contact with the campaigns conducted by the ANC since 1949, their source of information about such campaigns being what they read in newspapers and books. One cannot help feeling that had they accorded the 1949 Programme a status in any degree higher than a suitable topic for discussion at academic meetings of political clubs or literary and debating societies, they would know that in the field of political strife the COD has stood, not with the Nationalists, but with the ANC as a friend and ally, and not a dictator and controller, and that it hardly merits being placed in the position of an enemy of the oppressed people.
“It is safe to give the assurance that the present leaders of the ANC will leave it to the Nationalist government and those who sympathise with it, either to attack and victimise any of the Congresses or take steps in the form of propaganda or otherwise, to weaken and undermine the liberatory front.”
INFERIORITY COMPLEX
“If, as has been alleged ad nauseam, the COD has been dominating or controlling the ANC by virtue of the mere fact that it is a ‘white’ organisation, then the COD cannot be blamed for their being ‘superior’. In that event the ‘inferior’ ANC, to save itself from this inevitable control or domination, must either run away from the COD and, necessarily, from the anti-apartheid struggle in which COD is involved, or alternatively, the ANC must join hands with the Nationalist Party and fight the COD. The ANC will do neither.
“Those Africans who believe, or have been influenced by the belief, that they are inferior or cannot hold their own against other groups, are advised to keep out of any alliance with such groups and, prevention being better than cure, to refrain from joining the people in their active struggle for basic human rights, for in such a struggle many races are to be found.
“The ANC is not led by ‘inferiors’. It does not suffer from any nightmares about being controlled or dominated by any organisation; it is not subject to any such control or domination, and will not run away from the political struggle, or from a group or organisation. On the contrary it will continue to lead the movement for liberation against injustice and tyranny to freedom and democracy.”
(New Age, 13 November 1958)