Three hundred years http://www.aluka.org/action/showMetadata?doi=10.5555/AL.SFF.DOCUMENT.crp2b20043 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 Three hundred years Alternative title Unity movement history series Author/Creator Mnguni; Jaffe, Hosea Contributor Dudley, R. O. (author of foreword) Publisher APDUSA Date 1988-03 Resource type Books Language English Subject Coverage (spatial) South Africa, Namibia Coverage (temporal) 1652 – 1952 Rights By kind permission of Hosea Jaffe. Description This is a survey of South African history, from 1652 to 1952, written from the perspective of the Unity Movement. It was written as background for a campaign against the Van Riebeeck Festival celebrating 300 years of "white civilization" in South Africa. The author Hosea Jaffe wrote under the pen name of Mnguni. This study, he wrote in the introduction, "is not academic, but part of the knowledge of liberation." Format extent 190 page(s) (length/size) http://www.aluka.org/action/showMetadata?doi=10.5555/AL.SFF.DOCUMENT.crp2b20043 http://www.aluka.org NT HISTORY NT HISTORY ,' HUNDRED YEARS by "MNGUNI"' SERIES %Sep ll jf8j FHREE HUNDRED YEARS DEDICATION .he re-publication of "THREE HUNDRED YEARS" has been made possible, irgely, through the labour and effort of a band of workers. They, unstintingy, gave their evenings and weekends, stretching over months, in order to omplete this project. In doing so, they were motivated, solely, by their deotion and commitment to the cause of liberation. [hese workers dedicate their time, labour and effort to ROWYN RAJAH, a ,oung cadre of the Unity Movement, who was tragically killed on 12 October .985. THANKS )ur sincere thanks to ANN MACDONALD for drawing the illustration which ppears on the cover. FOREWORD The publication of "Three Hundred Years" by the New Era Fellowship (NEF) in 1952 was an event of particular historical significance. In that year, the South African ruling class planned a gigantic tercentenary celebration the Van Riebeeck Festival. They hoped to draw the non-citizen oppressed into the extravagant nationalistic orgy to mark 300 years of the "White civilisation" in South Africa. Official and academic historians cobbled together histories which simultaneously falsified and glorified the colonisation of South Africa. The willing participation of the oppressed in this tercentenary celebration would, in the eyes of the rulers, have signified an acceptance of their inferior status. Even more importantly, it would have been a measure of the success with which the subjugation of the "non-white" people had been accomplished.. However, for more than a year before 6 April 1952 - when the national orgy was to reach its peak - the Unity Movement campaigned nation-wide to educate the oppressed as to what those 300 years really meant. In the process of rallying the oppressed to boycott the celebrations, the masses were called upon to reaffirm their commitment to the total emancipation of all the oppressed from colonial domination and exploitation. "Three Hundred Years"' the history, was a vital document in this total rejection of the rulers' plan to inveigle the oppressed masses into celebrating with them. It raised the boycott of the tercentenary celebration to a political level that reflected a growing consciousness among the oppressed. It represented a fundamental breakthrough in the historical perceptions of what had happened in those three centuries. It enabled the oppressed to understand the 300- year process by which poverty, misery, race and colour discrimination and exploitation had become their daily lot - something they had no reason to celebrate! "Three Hundred Years " was the first work of its kind. Exhaustive research in the archives, the public libraries and in the increasing flood of political literature put out by contending political forces in South Africa, formed one basis of "Mnguni's" work. However, both the quality and purpose of the work derive from the use of the methods of historical materialism - Marxist historical analysis. "The Origin and Development of Segregation in South Africa " (Van Schoor, 1950) and "The R61e of the Missionaries in Conquest" (Nosipho Majeke, 1952) employed the same method of analysis.' All these works provided, in some way, a direct reply to the myths and inventions that made up much of the propaganda created to launch the Van Riebeeck Celebrations. It is a fact that official and academic historians have largely ignored the pioneering work of writers like "Mnguni", "Maieke", W.P. van Schoor, B.M. Kies, I.B. Tabata or even Edward Roux. All these writers were also active participants in the political movements of their time. The claim was made as late as 1986 in Colin Bundy's essays in "Remaking the Past" that the Marxist historical method was an innovation of historians (academic, of course) who emerged in the 1970s - two decades after the appearance of "Mnguni's" work. 1. To this list may be added "The Awakening of a People" (I.B. Tabata), "The Contribution of the Non-European Peoples to World Civilisation" (B.M. Kies), a brilliant synthesis debunking the myth underlying racism and colour theories and "The Colour Bar in Education" (E.L. Maurice), a discerning essay on the origins of the myths of "race" and colour prejudices and their influence on education policies in South Africa. The re-publication of "Three Hundred Years" is a necessary corrective to this kind of error. Falsification and racist idea-systems (ideologies) relating to both pre-colonial and colonial eras in South Africa's history, are consciously and deliberately demolished in "Mnguni's" work. Much new evidence of the nature and spread of pre-colonial societies has been uncovered since 1952 by archeologists. This underlines the general picture drawn by "Mnguni" in Volume I, a picture which debunks the popular myths accompanying the Great Trek inland and the myths contained in Government White Papers featuring an unpopulated inland no-man's land into which the Voortrekkers moved without destroying any settled, indigenous societies. The titanic clash between the colonial peoples and the colonisers and between labour and capital in the 19th and 20th centuries in Southern Africa is painstakingly depicted in "Three Hundred Years" But the work is not mere narrative. It stems from the pen and intellect of a scholar and active political partisan who identified himself completely with the struggles of the oppressed masses. "Official" historians may have chosen to conceal the existence of "Three Hundred Years" But they cannot ignore its impact upon generations who drew upon its teachings in strengthening the foundations of a truly national liberatory movement. The movement was developing an independent political ideology, its own democratic aims and its own perspectives. Volumes II and III chronicle the processes of land robbery, proletarianisation of forced labour through the growth of the sugar industry, mining, commercial agriculture and industrialisation and the maturing of class formations. Inevitably, the consolidation of resistance in a national movement against the developing system of "colonial fascism" dominates the analysis "'Mnguni" _provides in his closing chapters. Of this resistance he says: "From being a struggle against the effects of the sy'stem of oppression it became more and more a struggle against the very system itself." And of the Van Riebeeck tercentenary celebrations (which suffered a 95 percent boycott by the oppressed). "Mnguni" comments in his final sentence: "While the rulers celebrated, the sword of Damocles hung over their heads, for those whom they had conquered and held in thrall for 300 years had become metamorphosed into potential liberators." That story is unfinished. Nonetheless, "Three Hundred Years" occupies a singular place in the arsenal of ideas upon which the successful prosecution of the struggles for emancipation must draw. This place is assured by its re-publication, which is both timely and necessary. To the stream of manufactured history that has continued to flow from English and Afrikaans universities, and even "people's history workshops" has been added several varieties of "ethnic" history from the newer bush colleges. A new "Three Hundred Years" is all the more welcome for these reasons. R.O. DUDLEY Cape Town March 1988 INTRODUCTION The purpose of this history is to expose the process of the conquest, dispossession, enslavement, segregation and disfranchisement of the oppressed Non-Europeans of South Africa, in order that the oppressed as a whole will understand better how to transform the status quo into a society worth living for and worth living in. The present South Africa, the status quo, did not drop from the heavens. It was man-made. It can be transformed by man. In the very process of conquest, expropriation and enslavement, the conquered were metamorphosed into potential liberators, the conquerors were rendered unfit to manage society, and the artificial restraining walls of colour-discrimination baulk progress in all walks of life.