What Is the All-African Convention?

The Awakening of a People I.B. Tabata 1950 What is the All-African Convention? Chapter 1 What is the All African Convention? This is a question that is frequently asked to-day. It is a question that will be increasingly asked in the future. For in the struggles that lie ahead of us Convention is destined to play a decisive role. It is important, therefore, to know what the All African Convention really is and what it stands for. Now there are two ways in which tins question could be answered. One is simply to state what the Constitution of the Convention is and to give its resolutions. But this in our opinion would be to answer the question superficially. To approach the problem in this manner would be to give a picture of something bloodless, static and lifeless, and in point of fact it would not be true and accurate. What we want is a dynamic approach depicting a living body in a state of motion, capable of adjusting itself to the play of forces around it and in turn interacting with them. The better way, therefore, is to see the Convention as one more step in the political development of a people. We must survey it in its proper perspective, against its historical background and in its social setting. The All African Convention is an organisation, which gives expression to the aspirations of a people, a people who occupy a particular position in a given society. What, then, is the nature of that society? It is a complex social structure in which the ordinary class divisions (which are easily observable as the pattern of society in Europe) are complicated and obscured by multi-racial distinctions, constituting a veritable maze of conflicting interests, both real and apparent. The White Bloc There is what is known as the European (White) Bloc within which a small but powerful group has concentrated into its hands all the state power—the legislative, executive and administrative powers, with their concomitants, the law-court, the police and military forces. This power it uses for the purpose of forcibly maintaining its dominant position and keeping all other sections in a subordinate position. It arrogates to itself all the rights and privileges of citizenship, which should belong to all. By every means in its power it bolsters up the myth of itself as a master-race, a herrenvolk, the idea being that the progenitors of the rulers of this country, in some mystic past, must have issued from the divine lips of Brahma, whilst the Non-European masses originated from the grosser portions of his anatomy. This, then, is the first line of demarcation, which the rulers of South Africa make: the white herrenvolk on the one side and all the Non-Europeans on the other. But within the dominant section there are further divisions. There is the class division between worker and employer (which actually is obscured by the racial division between White and Black). Then there is the three cornered conflict between the farmer, the industrialist and the all-powerful mine magnate. There is further the artificial division between the bearded descendants of the Voortrekkers and the smooth-tongued Englishmen, which results on occasion in a windy storm-in-the-tea-cup and is whipped up fur political purposes. It is a device used by party politicians for cadging votes, but, no matter which of the herrenvolk parties gets into power, it carries out the same policy as its predecessor, be it United Party or Nationalist Party, since one and all are agreed on the fundamental policy of racial oppression against the Non- Europeans. This fact exposes the complete artificiality of the division between English and Dutch. While, this division had some justification in the historical past, to-day it has no basis in fact. For both sections are co-partners in the rape, in the conquest and in the plunder of South Africa. Both share in equal measures the vast dividends of the " Christian Trusteeship Proprietary Co., Ltd. " Both guard its interests with fanatic zeal; both pursue ever more efficient methods for the exploitation of the Black man in the endeavour to maintain the source of limitless profits. The real proprietors of this company are the financiers, the mine-magnates, to industrialists and the big farmers. In this Board of Executives of the Christian Trusteeship Company, any distinction between Afrikaner and Englishman would be an absurdity. As for the White worker, he becomes a junior beneficiary of the Company, receiving a small portion of the dividends. This fact explains the peculiar position and outlook of the White worker in South Africa. Like his counterpart in ancient history, the Roman proletarian, he lives at the expense or voiceless, rightless labour. In ancient Rome, the proletarian, though he was the lowest and poorest of its citizens, scorned manual labour as being beneath his dignity and lived off the crumbs of the rich slave-owner's table. He, too, battened on slave labour. Similarly, the White worker in South Africa to-day scorns manual labour as fit only for Black hands to perform. He rejects anything less than the white-collar job, which he guards as his exclusive prerogative by the divine right of his birth and for which he receives a wage out of all proportion to its value. This is possible because the White worker's bill of wages is subsidised from that of the Black worker. In other words, the White worker lives on the back of the voteless, oppressed Black masses. That is why the White worker takes his place on the side of the White boss and so enthusiastically supports the plans of the herrenvolk. That is why he is so willing to join the White bloc. There is no doubt that some emotionalism attends the superficial division between the sections of the herrenvolk bloc, but, while it is useful to party politicians, it has no real significance in itself, It is significant as a social phenomenon only when one realises that it is an excresence of that wider and more sinister racialism of White against Black, a racialism that has become pathological. In order to prevent the Black man from sharing in the fruits of the civilisation which he himself creates, in order to exclude him from sharing in the profits of their " Christian Trusteeship Pty. Co. Ltd., " the herrenvolk had to release a flood of racial emotionalism which sealed the White Bloc as against the Black masses. They had to raise the great bogey of " the threat to White security, " " the danger to the Western way of life, " " the menace of the Black hordes, " "the swamping of Christian civilisation by the Black. barbarians, " " the threat, to European civilisation, " etc. In this way the racial antagonism of White against Black split South African society violently in two, a division overshadowing and obscuring all others, even that of classes. While at first this racial emotionalism was fostered in the economic interests of the White employers, and while it was intended to facilitate the keeping of the Non-Europeans in a subordinate position, so that he would be an ever-ready source of cheap labour to feed the triple demands of the industrial machine, the gold-mines and the white farms; it gained so much momentum in the course of time, that now it exists on its own. It " grows by what it feeds on " till it has become a monster, a Frankenstein, threatening to consume society itself. Divisions among the oppressed Let us now consider the position on the other side of the line of demarcation, i.e., those whom the herrenvolk has designated as the Non-Europeans. It is a curious thing that though all the members of this group suffer from the same fundamental disabilities, though they have been cast out from the body politic and are excluded from the privileges of citizenship, yet they find it possible to regard themselves as different and separate entities. Though their only rights and privileges arc to serve their masters in different capacities, to starve in different degrees and to die at different rates, yet they find it possible to nurse their separate sores, to guard their dire " privileges " as if these were their exclusive possession and a source of pride from which tile others must lie jealously shut out. Each group finds some reason or other for considering itself superior to the others—be it pure blood or mixed blood. In olden days, those slaves who worked in the kitchen looked down on those who merely worked in the stables, because they themselves were in more intimate contact with master and mistress, young master and young mistress; the slaves in the stables in turn despised the mere slaves in the fields, because they groomed the master's favourite steeds. Each one would preen himself for favours received; the slave in the kitchen for the master's cast-off dinner-jacket, the slave in the stable for the old riding-breeches, the slave in the field for his faded pantaloons. It eminently suits the master to foster these artificial differences and supposed superiorities. The curious thing is that he has always found no more willing assistants in the game of divide and rifle than the slaves themselves, who guard the rigid barriers with an almost religious zeal. The master sets the fashion in ideas and attitudes. He is supercilious towards his " inferiors " and the slave in turn looks down Ins nose at those whom he considers to be his inferiors. It is indeed strange that the slave is acutely aware of the minutest details in the preferential treatment meted out by the master to the various groups, but he is blind to the most obvious fact that determines his very existence.

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