Part two of series on ANC I History

The establishment of the SANNC was a step towards Africans asserting their rights on a national basis and becoming an independent political voice. But self-representation or assertion in a significant way was difficult, insofar as neither the Crown nor Union government were sympathetic.

In this unpromising situation, the Congress articulated its claims through a discourse of loyalty. The African people were depicted as subjects who had never rebelled against the Crown, in embracing values associated with (or attributed to) the British and their king. Assimilation of British values found expression in the dress code adopted by African leaders: delegations wore top hats and suits and carried pocket watches and walking sticks.

The early ANC chose to take its vision from the promise of universalism found in early Cape liberalism (albeit manifested with various qualifications that rendered it very imperfect in practice), mission Christianity and the Bible itself. In advancing this outlook they treated these values as being embodied in the king, to whom they owed allegiance, pointing also to various proclamations by Queen Victoria, which asserted equality of treatment of all subjects of the Crown.

This discourse and attire of the embryonic liberation movement has often been described as undignified and submissive. But the stance is open to multiple interpretations. While the early ANC leaders may simply have intended adapting to the conventions of the terrain, wearing the rulers’ clothes may also be construed as a claim. The late distinguished cultural analyst John Berger writes:

‘The suit, as we know it today, developed in Europe as a professional ruling class costume in the last third of the 19th century. Almost anonymous as a uniform, it was the first ruling class costume to idealise purely sedentary power. The power of the administrator and conference table. Essentially the suit was made for the gestures of talking and calculating abstractly.’ (John Berger, About looking (New York: Vintage, 1991, p. 38). See also Raymond Suttner, ‘Periodisation, cultural construction and representation of ANC masculinities through dress, gesture and Indian nationalist influence’, Historia 54: 1, 2009, pp. 51–91).

One may also read an ironical or subversive element in the expressed loyalty to the Crown, throwing in doubt the organisation’s allegiance to the Union government. In 1914, the SANNC sent a delegation to petition King George V on the Natives Land Act of 1913, referring to themselves as having ‘loyally and cheerfully submitted to your Majesty’s sway in the full belief that they would be allowed to possess their land as British subjects, and would be given the full benefits of British rule like all other British subjects’. They invoked an 1843 proclamation of Queen Victoria, ‘whose most beautiful influence bound us to the British throne and people’, which laid down non-discrimination as the basis for colonisation. The petitioners ‘humbly pray that Your Majesty may see that that contract is implemented’, pointing out that ‘they have never accepted the Union Government in place of the Crown, but have only accepted the Union Government as advisers of the Governor-General, through their Ministers, for and on behalf of the Crown’.

Loyalism simultaneously subversive and a constraint

Subversive and ironical this may have been but ‘loyalism’ also set limits on African political activity. Both the SANNC and the militant women of the Free State who had destroyed their pass documents in 1913 halted their campaigns when the First World War broke out. Along with the news that the Land Act deputation had failed came the news of Britain declaring war on Germany. Immediately the ANC decided ‘to hang up Native grievances’, and leaders ‘set off for Pretoria to offer Congress’s services’.  (Mary Benson, South Africa.  The struggle for a birthright, 1985** pp. 38-39) But the government did not want African combatants in ‘warfare against whites’. Even so, over 80,000 Africans served as non-combatants. 

The ANC as an organisation

Congress as a national organisation normally met once a year in conference in its early period. Links between branches, provinces and the national leadership were loose, leading to distinct characteristics and practices in different areas. Activities at local level have only fairly recently started to be uncovered and documented, but already it appears that there was substantial activity in many cases. (Limb, ANC early years, p. 156 and generally). At national level, the degree of involvement appears to have been greater when conferences were held in Johannesburg (as opposed to the founding conference in Bloemfontein), as in March 1913, when the number of delegates reached 106 - almost twice the number at the founding conference. Over half of these were from the Transvaal, including mineworkers and some from distant rural areas in the north.

Provisions of the Congress constitution that have attracted attention were sometimes not enforced.  Some of the activity at a subnational level departed from constitutional provisions. For example, during the 1920s non-Africans were admitted as members in the Western Cape despite the constitution stipulating that membership was open to African men only. (See Walshe, The rise of African nationalism, pp. 225–6, 249–50). Women were not formally admitted to ANC membership until 1943, but there appears to have been a substantial disjuncture between the rules and practice, with women taking part in ANC campaigns and being included in branch membership lists. In Vredenburg, in the Northern Cape, seven of 37 members were women. (Limb, The ANC’s early years, p. 241).

ANC sometimes outflanked by more radical mass activities or itself undertook these

The loyalist politics of petitioning led to the ANC being outflanked by more radical organisations and movements, like Garveyism (the ‘back to Africa’ movement formed as the United Negro Improvement Association in 1914 by Jamaican-born Marcus Garvey), which advocated a radical Africanism, and the mass-based Industrial and Commercial Union (ICU), formed in 1919. While this showed that mass activities were possible, these organisations did not endure, fizzling out after a dramatic phase of activity. (Limb, The ANC's early years, pp. 263, 265-6, 325-8, 334-60).

At times, despite its professional leadership, Congress found itself caught up in and even leading broad mass and working class campaigns, as in the anti-pass campaign mounted by the Transvaal Native Congress Johannesburg branch, in 1919. In the aftermath of the war, ideas of freedom and rejection of humiliation were part of current discourse among Africans who had served.  Already harsh living conditions worsened through inflation and higher rents that pressed hard on the wages of African workers and also on the limited resources of the aspirant middle classes. The pass laws not only made it difficult for workers to bargain adequately but imposed a heavy burden on all classes of Africans. In 1919 the Transvaal Congress led a campaign of defiance. Protesters collected thousands of passes in sacks and dumped them at post offices  (See Limb, The ANC’s early years, pp. 174-82, Roux, Time longer than rope, pp. 114-21) while singing Nkosi Sikelele i Afrika (God save Africa), Rule Britannia and God save the King.  The Transvaal ANC issued a pamphlet supporting their demands, displaying the Union Jack and declaring ‘We are loyal’.

This apparently incongruous mix of symbols was not unique, a similar display of the Union Jack having occurred in the 1913 women’s pass defiance in Bloemfontein. The words of ‘Rule Britannia’ include the lines:

Rule Britannia, Britannia rule the

waves! Britons never, never, never

shall be slaves.

…

The nations, not so blest as

thee, Must, in their turns, to

tyrants fall.

-and the protesters were not only asserting their loyalty as British subjects. To sing ‘Rule Britannia’ was to claim the rights of British citizenship, the rejection of discrimination, and an assurance that, unlike nations ‘not so blest’, they would not fall to ‘tyrants’.

This commitment to notions of universalism, as they read, interpreted and articulated their allegiance to the king and what they drew from Christianity and liberalism, had a lasting effect in setting the ANC on a trajectory that remained opposed to exclusivist and chauvinist forms of Africanism or domination by any particular ethnic group. Even though both African exclusivism and ethnic chauvinism repeatedly resurfaced, they were contrary to its overall ideological ethos. Insofar as  Marxism was to become an influential current within the ANC, it converged with liberal and Christian influences in its espousal of universalism and rejection of racial discrimination. The ANC’s universalism is manifested in a range of human rights documents before as well as after the 1940s.( See. Kader Asmal, David Chidester and Cassius Lubisi, eds, Legacy of freedom: the ANC’s human rights tradition. Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball, 2005).

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.