THE JOURNAL OF UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH University of Kansas | Summer 2008 !e Grassroots Transformation of the African National Congress in the 1940s-1950s Nelson Mandela’s 1994 inaugu- ing the latent power of the frustrated ration as South Africa’s "rst demo- urban masses, new leadership in the cratically elected president soothed ANC incorporated organic strikes and decades of racial tensions in that boycotts in the 1940s into a more co- country. State-sanctioned racism, herent and durable movement during known as apartheid, crumbled under the 1950s. !e masses and leadership the spasms of the violence that shook developed a symbiotic relationship; Johannesburg and other cities in the the former o$ered economic leverage 1980s, but apartheid’s eventual de- and popular legitimacy, while the lat- struction became possible because of ter articulated a vision of racial equal- strategic changes among the left in the ity to counter the Nationalists’ oppres- 1940s and 1950s. !e African National sive paternalism. !e state cracked Congress (ANC), originally founded down on the better organized ANC-led as an interest group for the educated movement in the 1960s, but the closer African elite, in the 1940s and 1950s relationship between the ANC leader- forged a wide coalition of workers and ship and grassroots carried the move- intellectuals to challenge apartheid’s ment through its di#cult times on the legitimacy. Together with the South long walk to freedom. South Africa still African Communist Party (SACP), the faces serious racial disparities, but its mid-century ANC became a broad- progress from the apartheid age shows based grassroots organization com- the e#cacy of a broad-based move- mitted to nonracial democracy. !e ment in a$ecting signi"cant change. ANC’s transformation happened be- Contemporary progressives might cause demographic and economic model the ANC’s structure and strat- changes in the 1930s and 1940s shifted egy as they pursue their agendas. the ANC’s constituent base from rural !e Dutch "rst settled in South areas to the cities, especially Johannes- Africa in 1657, but their small popula- burg, and the new members pushed tion and rural lifestyle precluded any the Congress toward more confronta- racial dominance.1 Occasional skir- tional and ambitious ends. Recogniz- mishes over land or cattle peppered an ANDREW MacDONALD is a senior in political science and history at the University of Kansas. 7 otherwise peaceful racial coexistence African population. For example, the until the discovery of precious met- 1927 Native Administration Act em- als in the 1860s. !e British, who had powered compliant tribal chiefs in the come to South Africa during the Na- reserves to deter any uni"ed African poleonic Wars, became interested in resistance. More importantly, social the mineral-rich interior. !e descen- legislation constructed a regime of ra- dants of the Dutch settlers, now known cial hierarchies that informed later Na- as Afrikaners, resented the British in- tionalist policy. !is state ideology pos- cursions and fought the South Afri- ited a world strictly separated by racial can War at the turn of the century. !e groups of varying degrees of advance- British won a costly victory for control ment, and healthy social relations de- over the natural resources, but reached pended on clearly de"ned group roles. an understanding with the agricultur- !e compliant tribal chiefs, then, pro- ally inclined Afrikaners to together ex- moted the state’s racial paradigm, since ploit African labor on the farms and in they accepted and pro"ted from the the mines. As historian Bernard Muga- racial divisions. Some groups began to bane notes, “Africans and their welfare challenge this framework in the early were sacri"ced to promote an abiding 20th century by forwarding new con- settlement for the whites.”2 !e Treaty ceptions of group relations. African of Vereengiging ended hostilities in nationalists, black trade unionists, and 1902 and precipitated a series of laws Marxist groups challenged the eco- that solidi"ed economic and political nomic and social order by rejecting dominance by whites. the state’s interpretation of race. Un- !e British and Afrikaners con- fortunately, internecine disputes and summated their peace in the 1910 the respective groups’ strict organiza- Union Act, which established the re- tional structures stymied their e$orts gions of Natal, Cape, Transvaal and to change South Africa at the begin- the Orange Free State as a single Brit- ning of the 20th century. Political re- ish colony. !e economic needs of the sistance to white rule took shape in the British mine owners in%uenced the 1910s, but %oundered until the ANC political agreement between the Brit- and SACP together embraced grass- ish and Afrikaners.3 !e newly uni"ed roots in%uence.i South African state passed several laws !e "rst uni"ed African national- that forced African men to work part of ist movement began when Pixley Ka the year in the mines or on Afrikaner Izake Seme, an African educated in the farms, and spend the rest on barren United States and Britain, called on 60 reserves. Harold Wolpe, a South Afri- educated Africans to meet at Bloem- can specialist, terms this arrangement fontein on Jan 8th, 1912 to “together the “dual economy,” since Africans devise ways and means of forming our split their time between industrial and national union for the purpose of cre- agrarian labor.4 Uprooted from their ating national unity and defending our homes, Africans became more vulner- rights and privileges” by forming a Na- able to whites’ economic hegemony. tional Congress, the forerunner to the !e new government augmented ANC.5 Few Africans had any rights or its economic disenfranchisement of privileges to defend, making this na- the African community with socially scent ANC an intrinsically elitist or- debilitating policies that divided the ganization. !e Congress accepted i. I distinguish political resistance from military resistance, which e"ectively ended after the British annexation of Zululand in 1887. 8 support from sympathetic whites, sands of striking workers would likely but welcomed no non-Africans to its have garnered communist support in membership. Its narrow focus led it any European country, South Africa’s to concentrate on small issues ger- racial dynamics estranged the strik- mane only to the small African upper ing black miners from the white work- class. For example, its "rst major cam- ers who made up the International paign attempted to defend the lim- Socialist League (ISL), the forerun- ited African franchise in the Western ner the SACP . !ough one ISL leader, Cape Province, where blacks able to S.P. Bunting, fought to unite white and pass a “civilization test” could vote. black workers, his pleas came to no !e ANC’s e$ort garnered little sup- avail. Despite the racial progressivism port outside those few Africans con- of one its leaders, the ISL responded cerned with limited voting rights, and to its white base and idly observed ultimately failed to protect what rights the strike.8 !e communists surren- that some Africans could claim at the dered their chance to lead a multira- time.6 !e ANC failed to attract a large cial working class movement in 1922, following in the decades after its birth, when it supported white demands for and labor groups soon eclipsed it as preferential racial treatment. Africans’ political voice. !e 1922 strike began when While the early ANC was focus- the Chamber of Mines announced a ing on the political rights of “civilized” higher ratio of black to white workers, Africans, the state continued to push prompting fears among whites that Af- most of the black population into the rican workers would depress wages capitalist economy. Draconian labor and threaten jobs. Groups of Afrikaner laws like the 1916 Labor Registration workers branded themselves “com- Act funneled Africans into low-wage, mandos”, on the model of Boer guerril- unskilled labor. Wretched conditions, las from the South African War, and led especially in the gold mines, eventu- the strike under the slogan “Workers of ally provoked organic resistance, but the World unite for a White South Af- black workers lacked the organiza- rica.”9 !ough some communist lead- tion to e$ectively wield their latent ers discouraged such outright racial economic power. In 1920, forty thou- animosity, most dismissed African sand Africans walked out of the mines workers as irrelevant “pre-proletari- on the Rand, prompting one newspa- ats”, prompting many black workers to per to observe that “!e strike is un- associate communism with the white doubtedly an instinctive mass revolt working class. !e communists’ ac- against their whole status …!e Na- quiescence to white racism alienated tive Congress had very little to (do) the Party from most black workers, but with the movement…!e strike is in it hardly won it deep support among no man’s control.”7 !e ANC’s hands- whites. A Labor-Nationalist Pact gov- o$ approach is unsurprising, given its ernment won the 1924 election with outlook in 1920. Conditions in the gold the support of the white working class, mines had little to do with the ANC’s co-opting the communists’ white emphasis on voting rights in Western base.10 Abandoned by the white work- Cape; the mineworkers’ goals fell out- ing class, the communists tried to re- side the ANC’s mission, namely, to pair relations with the black popula- protect rather than extend the limited tion, but it took nearly thirty years for African rights. the Communist Party to integrate with !e African mineworkers also fell the ANC. outside the constituency of the Com- !e racial tensions on the Rand munist Party. !ough tens of thou- foreshadowed the friction to come 9 with South Africa’s impending demo- ANC activists like Nelson Mandela and graphic upheaval.