(PART ONE OF A SERIES ON THE ANC IN HISTORY AND HISTORY IN THE ANC)

Our media is filled with articles on the imminent demise of the ANC. Such themes are buttressed by the increasing accuracy of forecasts deriving from electoral polling, which show the ANC in a dire state, endless media reports and investigations on irregularities, corruption, and complicity in irregular use of force, many of these news items unthinkable 20 years ago.

That was a time when academics and analysts devoted much space to analysing the alleged anti-democratic character of a ‘dominant party system’, in the context of the then apparently immoveable nature of the ANC as the leading force in post-1994 elections.

This result from democratic elections repeatedly returned the ANC to “power” as the ruling party and there seemed then to be little chance of alternative parties displacing the ANC. (On the debate regarding the alleged dangers of “one party dominance” to democracy, with very few authors making the case for a dominant party or interrogating the weaknesses of opposition parties, see Raymond Suttner (2006) Party Dominance “Theory”: Of What Value?' Politikon, 33:3, 277 — 297, Shapiro, Ian & Jung, Courtney (1995). ‘South Africa's Negotiated Transition: Democracy, Opposition, and the New Constitutional Order’. Politics and Society 23 (3):269-308. H Giliomee, C Simkins, The Awkward Embrace. One-Party Domination and Democracy, Southall, Roger (1998), ‘The Centralisation and Fragmentation of South Africa’s Dominant Party System’, African Affairs, 97(389): 443–69 and Southall, Roger (2003), Democracy in Africa: Moving Beyond a Difficult Legacy (Pretoria: HSRC Publishers).

The political pre-eminence the African National Congress has enjoyed in South Africa until recent electoral setbacks, was itself not inevitable or on the cards. The ANC was often overshadowed by other organisations and there were moments in its history when it nearly collapsed. Sometimes it was more of an onlooker than an active participant in events. (Saul Dubow, The African National Congress, 2000, p. xiv).

It came into being as the South African Native National Congress (SANNC) in 1912.  It changed its name to the African National Congress (ANC) in 1923. Its birth was, at a time of realignment within both the white and the conquered black communities. 

In the aftermath of their victory over the Boers in the South African /Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902), the British were anxious to reconcile their former enemies to British rule. This included allowing former Boer territories to continue denying franchise and other rights to Africans, thereby disappointing the hopes raised by British undertakings to the black population during the war years.  For Africans, this signified that extension of the Cape franchise, which at that time did not directly discriminate on racial grounds, to the rest of South Africa was unlikely. Indeed, when the Act of Union of 1910 transferred sovereignty to the white population even the Cape franchise was open to elimination through constitutional change - and in the course of time it was indeed abolished.

Contextual basis for the rise of the ANC to ‘dominance’

From the onset of white settlement of Africa in 1652, but with particular intensity in the nineteenth century, land was seized and African chiefdoms crushed one by one as they sought to retain their autonomy. The conquests helped address the demand for African labour both by white farmers and, after the discovery of diamonds and gold in 1867 and 1886 respectively, by the mining industry.

At this point in South Africa’s history, many Africans were self-sufficient or even farmed profitably and were not attracted to working for wages. But the Union of South Africa government took rapid steps to limit the options open to Africans. It aimed to meet the demand of the mining industry for labour and to allay the anxiety of white farmers squeezed between capitalist agricultural companies on the one hand and competitive African peasants on the other.  

It criminalised breach of contract by Africans in a range of sectors. The 1913 Land Act prohibited Africans from owning rural land or pursuing any occupation outside reserve areas (comprising 7.5 per cent of the country), dispossessing many African landowners and outlawing leasing or tenant-farming relationships between black and white.  

This and other laws were used to destroy a whole class of peasant producers, forcing them into overcrowded reserves or into new and arduous social relationships - as farm workers or mine labourers, and later in the least- skilled and worst-paid types of urban industrial and domestic employment. (For a comprehensive study of the destruction of the peasantry, see Colin Bundy, The rise and fall of the South African peasantry, 1988).

Africans learn from defeat and build unity.

Africans had also drawn lessons, including that confronting the coloniser as separate chiefdoms had facilitated military defeat. In the new conditions, it was argued, they should unite and bury the differences and enmities that had long existed between South Africa’s African ethnic communities.

Numerous political organisations had emerged from the 1880s onwards, and broad national meetings expressed opposition to the draft Act of Union and called for the establishment of a permanent national organisation. (Andre Odendaal, Vukani Bantu! The beginnings of black protest politics in South Africa to 1912 (1984), pp 168-180).

It was against this backdrop that Pixley ka Isaka Seme, a barrister/advocate trained at Columbia and Oxford Universities, pressed for the formation of the SANNC, while condemning inter-ethnic enmities. Such conflict, he proclaimed, ‘has shed among us sufficient blood! We are one people. These divisions, these jealousies, are the cause of all our woes and of all our backwardness and ignorance today.’ (Thomas Karis and Gwendolen M. Carter, eds, From protest to challenge: a documentary history of African politics in South Africa, 1882–1964, vol. 1 (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1972), p. 72).

Seme’s exhortations fell on receptive ears. On 8 January 1912 over 60 chiefs, clergymen, lawyers, teachers, clerks, interpreters, small landholders, businesspeople, journalists, estate agents, artisans, small building contractors, labour agents and workers assembled in Bloemfontein to establish the SANNC.

The structure of the new organisation was complex. The alliance of chiefs with commoners would be filled with ambiguities, for some chiefs were incorporated into segregationist apparatuses and others were in varying degrees allied with resistance to the state. This relationship continued to be troubled over much of the ANC’s existence, and recent (post-1994) legislative attempts to elevate the status of chiefs have aroused controversy.

The initial leadership, comprising the new professional stratum, has been described as an elite; but this was in no sense a ‘power elite’. Lacking political power, the new organisation included an intelligentsia without access to academies or publishing houses and an African peasantry without land. (Peter Limb, ANC’s early years, 2010, p. 13). Workers were not represented in organised form. Unlike the western experience, African political organisations preceded the establishment of trade unions. African political activity had previously centred on elections in the Cape Colony, where those who met the property and educational qualifications could vote and stand for office. In the main, however, it entailed acting through white liberals as intermediaries to advance African rights.

Raymond Suttner served 11 years in prison and house arrest. He was in the UDF, ANC and SACP leadership until the Jacob Zuma era. Suttner has published widely on historical topics.  He is currently an emeritus professor at UNISA.