1. Founding and early History to 1940

1. Founding and early History to 1940

Undoubtedly the most important work to have appeared in the centenary year on the establishment of the ANC takes the story to, but not beyond, the meeting in Waaihoek, Bloemfontein, in January 1912 at which SANNC was founded. Andre Odendaal’s «Te Founders», subtitled «Te Origins of the ANC and the Struggle for Democracy in South Africa», contains almost 500 pages of text, followed by 56 pages of notes in very small font, and this refects the extent of the research that underpins the volume[730]. Te book draws upon Odendaal’s most impressive master’s dissertation, published as «Vukani Bantu: the Beginnings of Black Protest Politics to 1910» as long ago as 1984, the doctoral dissertation that he completed at the University of Cambridge in 1983 on «African Political Mobilisation in the Eastern Cape, 1880–1912» and new research, especially on African organisations outside the Cape. Te result is a masterly synthesis, which inter alia explores the impact of the South African war on black African organisation in the four states of what became South Africa, then how the process leading to the creation of the Union of South Africa in 1910 galvanised black Africans into united action. «Te Founders» ofers a mass of new information on many members of the new educated African elite and their activities in the late nineteenth century and frst decade of the twentieth. Odendaal calls his work «an organisational or “family” history, which seeks to construct a group biography of the frst generations of activists and political bodies in South Africa» (P. XIII–XIV). As he says, he only addresses historiographical debates on his period implicitly, his main concern being «to restore the African voice and identity» (P. XIV). The key that unlocked the door to this was his reading of the early newspapers published for black readers, newspapers that contained content both in English and in indigenous languages.

Writing in 1984, Odendaal wondered whether the ANC, when it reached its centenary in 2012, would be «guerrilla or government» (P. XV). Now that we know the answer, he ends his Introduction to his new book by expressing the hope that the past he has recovered «will inspire those both inside and outside the ANC… to proceed into the future more enlightened and more emboldened in the pursuit of human dignity and democracy» (P. XV). He clearly writes as an admirer of the ANC, who has not allowed disillusionment with it in the present to afect his retelling of what he sees as an inspiring story of people struggling for equal rights. One can of course quibble with the way he has presented some of his material – the struggle against segregation in the early twentieth century was hardly one for democracy in the sense that we know today, for example, which makes his sub-title less than accurate – but this is a major scholarly work, which will retain its importance long into the future.

The same cannot be said for another book that became available in 2012, though published in 2011, the frst full-scale biography of Pixley ka Isaka Seme, the driving force behind the establishment of the South African Native National Congress in January 1912[731]. Moss Mashamaite’s «Te Second Coming» is an ofen poorly written and self-indulgent amalgam of scattered information about Seme, about whom the author writes in hyperbole, at one point calling him «Arguably the most important historical South African fgure» (P. 37). Tough Mashamaite has found some interesting new information about Seme’s role in the establishment of the Native Farmers Association of Africa (Chapter 6 and especially P. 165f), his book is far from being the seminal biography that Seme deserves, one on the lines of, say, to Brian Willan’s monumental biography of Seme’s colleague Sol. T. Plaatje, the frst Secreatry General of the South African Native National Congress or Heather Hughes’s powerfully-written life of John Dube, the frst President-General of the organisation[732]. «Te Second Coming» is especially weak on Seme’s later years, including his disastrous presidency of the ANC from 1930 (Chapter 14), where Mashamaite makes no use of Marvin Faison’s thesis, which remains the most detailed study on that period of Seme’s life[733].

Seme’s role in relation to the various newspapers he established is sketched briefy in one of the chapters (P. 8) of Mashamaite’s book[734]. How much more can be learned of the most important paper Seme founded, «Abantu-Batho», can now be seen from «The People’s Paper: A Centenary History and Anthology of Abantu-Batho» edited by Peter Limb[735]. When he founded the newspaper in 1912, Seme expected it to become SANNC’s national newspaper, which it was only for a relatively short period, and it limped along before it folded in 1931, yet it is a key source of information about black politics in the ANC’s frst two decades. Ye t while leading African politicians, public intellectuals and journalists of the day, and such people as the poets S.E.K Mqhayi and Nontsizi Elizabeth Mgqwetho and editor Robert Grendon, contributed to «Abantu-Batho», the shocking fact is that no run of the paper has survived anywhere for scholars to use. What Limb has now done is to bring together a dozen essays on aspects of the paper’s history, and to append to them a 160 page anthology of columns – articles, editorials and letters – from «Abantu-Batho» for every year between 1912 and 1931, fragments of issues of the newspaper found in scattered places on three continents. Tis exercise in recreating a long-lost newspaper involved massive research, for which Limb was able to draw upon the knowledge he accumulated while working on his monograph, published in 2010, on the early years of the ANC, which focused especially on the relationship between the early ANC and black labour and which began to explore the history of the ANC in this period on a local and provincial basis[736]. His chapters in this new book provide much new information about the organisation, especially in relation to its day-to-day activities on the Witwatersrand. One of the chapters in this book, by Robert Vinson, explores relations between the ANC and the Garvey movement in the 1920s, a topic examined in greater depth in another 2012 publication, Vinson’s long-awaited monograph on Garveyism in South Africa[737]. «Abantu-Batho» undoubtedly played an important role in challenging the injustices of South Africa in the years afer 1912 and its partial recreation now is a major achievement, even if much about the paper remains uncertain, including the role played by Queen Labotsibeni of Swaziland, in establishing it, the subject of another chapter in this centennial volume.

«The People’s Paper» throws important new light on the relationship between the ANC and other organisations in the early decades afer 1912 and its infuence relative to them. It has of course long been known that in these decades the ANC’s fortunes rose and fell, and that the ANC was ofen eclipsed by other organisations, most notably the Industrial and Commercial Workers Union (ICU) in the 1920s, but too ofen it and these other organisations have been regarded as discrete and separate entities. In fact, members of the ANC were ofen involved with, and had important infuence on, such other organisations as the ICU and the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA), so that no hard and fast lines can be drawn between the ANC and the other organisations with which its history was intimately intertwined. It has also long been known that the ANC, though predominantly moderate and quiescent in this period, also had radical moments, in the immediate afermath of the First World War and in the presidency of J. T. Gumede between 1927 and 1930[738]. While it may not, therefore, be entirely correct to write, as Tula Simpson does in his Introduction to the special issue of the «South African Historical Journal» on «Te ANC at 100», of «under-acknowledged levels of radicalism» in the movement before 1940s[739], the new work of Limb, Vinson and others has given us much new detail on those moments of radicalism. Tis work reveals ofen cross-cutting connections between those in favour of a more moderate approach and those who more clearly saw the connections between political and economic power and wished to challenge both. What can be said of the new work is that it has given us a richer and more complex picture of the early decades of the ANC, but there remains ample scope for scholars to use the «Abantu-Batho» anthology, along with other sources, to explore further both the relationship between the ANC and other organisations and the moments of radicalism in the early ANC.