Black power in South Africa: the evolution of an ideology http://www.aluka.org/action/showMetadata?doi=10.5555/AL.SFF.DOCUMENT.crp2b20026 Use of the Aluka digital library is subject to Aluka’s Terms and Conditions, available at http://www.aluka.org/page/about/termsConditions.jsp. By using Aluka, you agree that you have read and will abide by the Terms and Conditions. Among other things, the Terms and Conditions provide that the content in the Aluka digital library is only for personal, non-commercial use by authorized users of Aluka in connection with research, scholarship, and education. The content in the Aluka digital library is subject to copyright, with the exception of certain governmental works and very old materials that may be in the public domain under applicable law. Permission must be sought from Aluka and/or the applicable copyright holder in connection with any duplication or distribution of these materials where required by applicable law. Aluka is a not-for-profit initiative dedicated to creating and preserving a digital archive of materials about and from the developing world. For more information about Aluka, please see http://www.aluka.org Black power in South Africa: the evolution of an ideology Author/Creator Gerhart, Gail M. Publisher University of California Press (Berkeley) Date 1978 Resource type Books Language English Subject Coverage (spatial) South Africa Coverage (temporal) 1943 - 1978 Source Northwestern University Libraries, Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies, 968 G368bl Rights By kind permission of Gail M. Gerhart. Description This book traces the evolution of Africanist and Black Consciousness thinking, from the ANC Youth League and the Pan Afrianist Congress through the Black Consciousness Movement of the 1970s. Prominent figures in this history include Anton Lembede, A. P. Mda, Robert Sobukwe, and Steve Biko. Format extent 392 pages (length/size) http://www.aluka.org/action/showMetadata?doi=10.5555/AL.SFF.DOCUMENT.crp2b20026 http://www.aluka.org S.F, . S.F, . 14 A. i:l . ..... ... ... ... ... U6, Northwestern University LIBRARY Evanston, Illinois Perspectives on Southern Africa 1. THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN UNKNOWN SOUTH AFRICAN, by Naboth Mokgatle (197 1) 2. MODERNIZING RACIAL DOMINATION: South Africa's Political Dynamics, by Heribert Adam (197 1). 3. THE RISE OF AFRICAN NATIONALISM IN SOUTH AFRICA: The African National Congress, 1912-1952, by Peter Walshe (1971) 4. TALES FROM SOUTHERN AFRICA, by A. C. Jordan (1971) 5. LESOTHO 1970: An African Coup Under the Microscope, by B. M. Khaketla (1972) 6. TOWARDS AN AFRICAN LITERATURE: The Emergence ofLiterary Form in Xhosa, by A. C. Jordan (1972) 7. LAW, ORDER, AND LIBERTY IN SOUTH AFRICA, by A. S. Mathews (1972) 8. SWAZILAND: The Dynamics of Political Modernizations, by Christian P. Potholm (1972) 9. THE SOUTH WEST AFRICANAMIBIA DISPUTE: Documents and Scholarly Writings on the Controversy Between South Africa and the United Nations, by John Dugard (1973) 10. CONFRONTATION AND ACCOMMODATION IN SOUTHERN AFRICA: The Limits of Independence, by Kenneth W. Grundy (1973) 11. THE RISE OF AFRIKANERDOM: Power, Apartheid, and the Afrikaner Civil Religion, by T. Dunbar Moodie (1975) 12. JUSTICE IN SOUTH AFRICA, by Albie Sachs (1973) 13. AFRIKANER POLITICS IN SOUTH AFRICA, 1934-1948, by Newell M. Stultz (1974) 14. CROWN AND CHARTER: The Early Years of the British South Africa Company, by John S. Galbraith (1975) 15. POLITICS OF ZAMBIA, edited by William Tordoff (1975) 16. CORPORATE POWER IN AN AFRICAN STATE: The Political Impact of Multinational Mining Companies in Zambia, by Richard Sklar (1975) 17. CHANGE IN CONTEMPORARY SOUTH AFRICA, edited by Leonard Thompson and Jeffrey Butler (1975) 18. THE TRADITION OF RESISTANCE IN MOZAMBIQUE: Anti- ColonialActivity in the Zambesi Valley, 1850-1921, by Allen F. Isaacman (1976) 19. BLACK POWER IN SOUTH AFRICA: The Evolution of an Ideolog), by Gail M. Gerhart (1978) 2o. BLACK HEART: Gore-Browne and the Politics of Multiracial Zambia, by Robert I. Rotberg (1977). 21. THE BLACK HOMELANDS OF SOUTH AFRICA: The Political and Economic Development ofBophuthatswana and KwaZulu, by Jeffrey Butler, Robert I. Rotberg, and John Adams (1977). 22. AFRIKANER POLITICAL THOUGHT, by Hermann Giliomee and Andre du Toit (1978). 23. PORTUGUESE RULE IN ANGOLA: A Study in Racial Domination, by Gerald Bender (1977) 24. LAND AND RACIAL DOMINATION IN RHODESIA, by Robin Palmer (1977) 25. THE ROOTS OF RURAL POVERTY: Historical Essays on the Development of Underdevelopment in Central and Southern Africa, edited by Robin Palmer and Neil Parsons (1977). 26. MBIRA MUSIC AMONG THE SHONA PEOPLE OF RHODESIA, by Paul Berliner (1977)- Black Power in South Africa Black Power in South Africa The Evolution of an Ideology Gail M. Gerhart UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS BERKELEY * LOS ANGELES * LONDON University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd. London, England Copyright 0 1978 by The Regents of the University of California ISBN 0-520- 03022-2 Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 75-13149 Printed in the United States of America 123456789 Contents PREFACE vii ABBREVIATIONS xi MAP xii 1. Ideological Responses to Inequality I The South African Ideological Spectrum 3 Ideology and the Black Struggle 15 2. The Social Foundations of Black South African Politics 21 A World Made by Whites 21 Peasants and Proletarians 25 Black Bourgeoisie 32 Realists and Rebels 39 3. Lembede and the ANC Youth League, 1943-1949 45 Lembede Comes to Johannesburg 45 Lembede's Early Life 51 The Philosophy of Africanism 54 Dilemmas of African Cultural Identity 64 Who Owns South Africa? 67 "Going It Alone" 75 The League Calls For Action 77 The 1949 Programme of Action 82 4. The African National Congress in the 1950s 85 Apartheid Triumphant 85 Continuity and Change in the ANC 86 The Legacy of Liberalism 93 Cooperation with the Indian Congress 01 The Congress Alliance 0o5 Apartheid and the African Middle Class io8 The Congress Alliance and ANC Ideology 1 16 Vi CONTENTS . The Africanist Movement, 1951-1958 124 Mda Inherits Lembede's Mantle 124 The Bureau of African Nationalism 134 Leballo and the Orlando Africanists 138 The Return to Nationalist Fundamentals 145 The Attack on the Congress Alliance 150 TheIssueofCommunism 164 The Africanists and the Mass Mood of the / Late 1950s 167 6.The Pan Africanist Congress, 1959-1960 173 The Africanists Break Away 173 Robert Sobukwe 182 Ideological Refinements 193 The PAC and African Cultural Reassertion 200 Reverberations from Africa to the North 204 7. Sharpeville and Quiescence 212 Popular Responses to the PAC 212 Moving Towards Confrontation 226 Emergency 236 Aftermath 246 The Hiatus of the 1960s 251 8.BlackConsciousnessinthe1970s 257 Origins of the Black Consciousness Movement 257 External Influences and the New Definition of"Black" 270 Perspectives on the Struggle 281 Beyond the University Generation 290 9. From Black Consciousness to Black Power? 300 The 1 980s and Beyond EPILOGUE 312 APPENDIX 317 BIBLIOGRAPHY 321 INDEX 345 Preface THIS BOOK EXAMINES THE DEVELOPMENT OF AFRICAN nationalism in South Africa over the three decades since the Second World War. While it necessarily recounts events of historical importance, its primary emphasis is on the intellectual dimension of black political history, and in particular on the interplay of ideologies which has marked the postwar era and which has brought many present-day African intellectuals to their current Black Power perspective. Because the orthodox nationalist or Black Power school of African politics in South Africa-in contrast to the multiracialist or more liberal school-has in the past been given rather less consideration than it deserves by historians and political scientists, the central purpose of this study will be to trace and analyze the evolution of this increasingly significant strain of African political thought. In so doing, we shall have occasion to look at the role of the African urban intelligentsia, out of whose frustrations, ambitions, and shifting world view the most important formulations of African ideology have taken shape, and, more specifically, at the role of four individual nationalist thinkers whose contributions to the evolution of orthodox African nationalism have been particularly influential. One, Robert Sobukwe, is a major figure with an international reputation. The other three-Anton Lembede, Ashby Peter Mda, and Steve Biko- are more obscure personalities whose places in history are still far from fixed. Much of the information and interpretation in this book is drawn from interviews with South Africans, carried out be- Viii PRE-FACE tween the years 1968 and 1973. In addition to my own interviewing, I have made use of transcribed interviews conducted by Gwendolen Carter, Thomas Karis, and Sheridan Johns on their visits to South Africa in 1963 and 1964. Documentary materials have also been a major source, and here again I have benefited greatly from the work of other researchers, most notably Professors Carter and Karis, and Benjamin Pogrund of the Johannesburg Rand Daily Mail, through whose efforts much valuable historical material on South Africa has been preserved. Political pamphleteering, once the nearly exclusive preserve of white groups in South Africa, became in the period after the Second World War a widespread means of political communication among blacks as well. Thanks to the timely work of researchers, and to the equally industrious efforts of the South African police looking for evidence to incriminate government opponents, much ephemeral material of this kind has been preserved in accessible form, either in libraries or in public trial records. For example, in the case of South Africa's famous Treason Trial of 1956-61, the documents presented in evidence now fill twenty-eight reels of microfilm, available to scholars through the Cooperative Africana Microform Project of the Center for Research Libraries in Chicago. In addition to pamphlets, flyers and circulars issued by African political movements and their non-African support groups, other materials thus preserved include private correspondence, speeches, and organization reports and minutes.