Origins and Development of African Nationalism

- the term ‘African nationalism’ has been used in a very broad way. As a general definition, African nationalism in South Africa can be seen, broadly, as all political actions and ideological elements to improve the status, the rights and position of Africans in the emerging society imposed by white intrusion and conquest.

- the movement does not look back nor want to restore some earlier political or social situation. Thus, it is clearly a secondary form of resistance.

- it showed up 1st and most clearly in the early phases in the Cape Colony because that was the only area which had any significant political rights and opportunities. African political interest and involvement began in the 1870s and became a significant factor from the 1880s. Among the early organisations formed were: Native Voters’ Vigilance Ass., Native Education Ass. and the temperance body, the Independent Order of True Templars.

- as previously noted, the high degree of political unity among Africans in the Cape was broken in the 1890s. In the polarisation of politics in the 1898 elections, Africans were also divided. In the years that followed, that split was deepened and led eventually to the formation of 2 political organisations among Africans: South African Political Association led by Rev. Walter Rubusana in 1902 and the Cape Native Voters Association led by John Tengo Jabavu in 1907. Although the correlation was not complete (i.e., there were exceptions on both sides), membership of the 2 organisations tended to be Xhosa and Mfengu respectively.

- in spite of the division, there were broader, South African issues on which Africans could agree and often work together during the next decade or so:

• Native college scheme—eventually Fort Hare College was set up in 1916; much fund raising and political lobbying.
  
  
• South African Native Affairs Commission 1903-06; there was a lot of concern because of the strong fears and views being expressed by white witnesses. Africans wanted to ensure their views were expressed; Africans lobbied to testify.
  
  
• Union negotiations and the Union Conference Africans were not part of the negotiations to create the Union of South Africa, but a former prime minister of the Cape, W. P. Schreiner, agreed to represent them;
  
  
• Draft South Africa Act—Africans opposed the exclusions of Africans from most aspects of political life in the proposed constitution. In 1910 they held a conference of representatives from all areas of South Africa; the conference appointed and raised money for a delegation (including Schreiner) to go to London to lobby against the act’s passage in the British parliament unless some changes were made; this failed.
  
  
• 1913 Land Act—again, Africans appointed and raised money for a delegation to go to Britain to try to get the act vetoed; again there was failure.
  

• Bantu Union of the Cape Province (Meshack Pelem was the 1st president)
  
• Cape Province Native Congress—Zacchaeus Mahabane, a Methodist minister was a leader; Mahabane had a long career in several organisations and was an important leader of the ANC in the 1950s.
  

• Joint Council of Africans and Europeans -- 1921
  
• Communist Party -- 1921
  
• European-Bantu Conference -- 1923
  
• South African Institute of Race Relations -- from the late 1920s
  
• Non-European Unity Conference -- 1930s; this organisation in the Cape brought Africans and Coloureds together; the most important political organisation among Coloureds was the African Political Organisation (APO). The APO’s leader, Dr. Abduraman, shared the leadership in the Non-European Unity Conference with Mahabane as the African leader.
  

1. Early, elite stage—up to World War II;
   
2. Mass movement stage—from middle 1940s, try to mobilise the masses of Africans and lead resistance to apartheid after 1948 and up until the Sharpeville massacre in March 1960.
   

“The demon of racialism, the aberrations of the Xosa-Fingo feud, the animosity that exists between Zulus and the Tongans, between the Basutos and every other Native must be buried and forgotten; it 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.”

1. Christianity and postmillennialism
   - right from the beginning, the ideal for South Africa among members of the African nationalist movement was a multiracial, democratic society—i.e., the broadest and most inclusive kind of nationalism. These aspirations were rooted in Christian values and teaching, especially postmillennialism; postmillennialism encompassed the idea of progressive improvement of people and of society towards the eventual achievement of millennial society, or at least one in which Christian principles would be dominant and pervasive, with equality and equity; there would be an end to discrimination, inequality and barriers based upon colour or race.
   
   - this has been far and away the largest and most consistent influence on African nationalism, especially on the ANC. If one examines the leadership of the ANC, the scale of this influence quickly becomes obvious; many were Christian clergymen and a large proportion of others were active laymen in the Christian churches.
   

2. Communism and the Communist Party
   - it is true that the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA) emerged in 1921 and some Africans joined.
   
   - initially, the CPSA supported white workers in their confrontations with capitalists (the Rand strike and similar conflicts and confrontations). There was an inherent problem for Marxists and one with which they have had great difficulty. Originally, they assumed, “Here is the quintessential class struggle of proletariat against capitalism— incipient revolution.”
   
   - however, you have to look at what the struggle was really about. White workers wanted protection from the competition of African workers, special privileges and higher rates of compensation—i.e., the colour bar and ‘civilised wages’ (several times wages of African workers). Subsequently, this was recognised [although until very recently, most Marxists still maintained despite all the evidence, that the ‘true’ interests of white and black workers were the same]; on orders from Moscow, the CPSA shifted support to Africans as the true representatives of the proletariat.
   
   - some Africans did become members of the CPSA and a few even went off to Moscow for training, etc. However, these were never very numerous and over time, some became disillusioned and left the party. In spite of claims and white fears, communism was never especially successful among Africans. Even in the post 1948 period, white communists were more visible and influential than African communists.
   
   - the influence of the CPSA in the ANC was, especially during the interwar period, not very strong. Partly, this was because communists attacked the educated leaders as bourgeois, etc. The latter responded by expelling communists from the ANC.
   
   - in the 1950s, the ANC became more inclusive and tolerant; it was argued that anyone who opposed apartheid and the National Party (NP) government was welcome and that included communists. The ANC allied itself with the white Congress of Democrats, most of whom were former CPSA members. As is well known, Joe Slovo, the white CPSA member and later general secretary of the CPSA, became an influential member of the ANC leadership during the long years of suppression and exile; he also became an ANC cabinet minister in the transitional government led by Nelson Mandela. Yet, it is untrue to argue, as the NP government as well as anti-communist fanatics in the US, Britain (e.g., Margaret Thatcher), and even Canada did, that the ANC was controlled or dominated by communists.
   
   - moreover, there was serious opposition to allowing communists into the ANC or even to ally with the Congress of Democrats. The strongest opposition came from Lembede’s followers in the Youth League. This opposition was a major complaint of those who split from the ANC in the late 1950s and formed the Pan Africanist Congress in 1959 (we shall examine this in the next module/lecture).
   

3. Booker T. Washington’s Ideas and Approaches
   - Booker T. Washington’s (1856-1915) ideas did appeal to a few South Africans late in the 19th C and early 20th C. Washington had started the famous Tuskegee Institute in 1881.
   
   - Washington believed that black people needed to concentrate for the immediate future on educational and economic development and avoid politics; until they were equal in these areas, they would not get and probably should not expect to get, much from politics in competition with white people. More militant blacks have sometimes regarded Washington as a bit of an Uncle Tom; that belittles his achievements and is usually rooted in a profound ignorance of the conditions and situation faced by African Americans in Washington’s time. In fact, one site claims that he was not quite as accommodationist as has been charged.
   
   - when Washington’s ideas were discussed in 1886-87 in the Xhosa-English newspaper, Imvo Zabantsundu, Africans in the Cape overwhelmingly rejected his approach.
   
   - however, Rev. John Dube (1871-1946) was a great admirer of Washington and advocate of his ideas; Dube had spent time in the US being educated and visited Tuskegee. In fact he founded Ohlange Institute modelled on Tuskegee. Dube was 1st president of SANNC and served additional terms as president and on the ANC executive. During the 1930s when he served again as president, he was increasingly out of touch with younger leaders and what they wanted. Thus, it cannot be said that Washington’s ideas had much influence on African nationalism or the ANC. Any influence that they exerted was on people of Dube’s generation
   

4. Pan Africanism and the Africanist Tradition.
   - there were 2 traditions in pan Africanism: the ‘Africanist’ stream and the ‘non-racialist’ or ‘equality’ stream. Although Africans from South Africa attended Pan African Conferences and were certainly aware of the ideas of pan Africanism as they evolved in the 20th C, the ‘Africanist’ tradition did not have a major impact and influence on African nationalism in South Africa until the 1940s.
   
   - pan Africanism was developed by members of the African diaspora, primarily from the western hemisphere; as a result, it was not African in its origins and leadership and ownership did not pass to Africans until 1945.
   
   - the term ‘pan-African’ was a way of drawing the link between all people with an African ancestry; however, as we shall see, this is rather different from what the term came to mean by the 1960s.
   
   - pan-Africanism was also a reaction to the fever of racism and intolerance which gripped most of Europe and the West in the late 19th and early 20th Cs; for black people who were increasingly excluded and discriminated against in the western hemisphere and Europe, who were looked down upon and denigrated, pan-Africanism was an attempt to find some alternative.
   

• the concept of ‘race’ was accepted by these early pan Africanists; this carried the idea that blacks as blacks shared a great deal in common (i.e., that many traits, even cultural ones, were genetic). Thus, it has been called a black racism. Frequently, they advocated separation to maintain this uniqueness.
  
  
• there was optimism about the future and an assertion of pride in being black. With the on-going denigration of black people, this has been a recurring necessity and a more recent expression of the same objective was the ‘Black is beautiful’ movement in the 1960s and 70s.
  
  
• most in this diaspora tradition (including Marcus Garvey whom we shall discuss shortly) knew little of Africa and its culture. Most never went there. Blacks, like the Blydens, immigrating to Africa in Sierra Leone and Liberia, did not integrate very fully with the local indigenous population. These immigrants have always behaved more like creoles or mulattos. This split between the coastal cities where the immigrants settled and the inland, indigenous people is still a prominent aspect of politics and the civil war in both Sierra Leone and Liberia in spite of the fact that the migrations took place about 200 years ago in Sierra Leone and over a century ago in Liberia.
  
  
• the influence of these early writings was primarily on diaspora blacks, not Africans.
  
  
• diaspora blacks could and did sympathise with Africans as the scramble took place; Africans were being subjected to the racism and domination that diaspora blacks knew. Members of the diaspora criticised the conquest of Africa, but they had little political power; they did, however, try to assist Africans to make a claim for self-determination at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919.
  

• 1919 in Paris coinciding with the Peace Conference—57 delegates, English & French.
  
• 1921 in two sessions—one in London and then switched to Brussels.
  
• 1923 in two sessions—in London and then Lisbon.
  
• 1927 in New York
  

• W.E.B. du Bois (1868-1963) is probably the most notable representative of the alternate stream.
  - he too had to confront the problem of white racism, writing early in the 20th C, “The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the colour line—the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea.”
  
  - however, he advocated seeking rights and equality wherever black people lived. He helped to found the NAACP and was one of its main leaders, especially in his voluminous writings giving inspiration and encouragement. The inter war period was when segregation and the activities of the KKK were at their worst in the US.
  
  - he promoted the idea of non-racialism, equality and the elimination of skin colour as a significant factor in human relations and human rights. The civil rights campaigns in the post 1945 era were the direct and logical extension and outcome of his approach.
  
  - Du Bois himself was hounded by the FBI and the red baiters in the US; he lived the last of his long life in exile. He went to live in Ghana at Nkrumah’s invitation in the late 1950s and died there.
  

• Marcus Garvey (1887-1940)
  - Garvey was a Jamaican who revived and extended the Africanist tradition with great flare; he was the great antagonist of du Bois. Garvey founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association in 1914 in Jamaica, but moved to New York in 1916. He is credited with coining the phrase “Africa for the Africans”, and he certainly made it famous.
  
  - he rejected the idea of black people staying in the new world; he argued that whites would never accept the idea of equality or equal rights. He inaugurated the ‘Back to Africa’ movement and created a ‘Government in Exile’ in which he was ‘Provisional President of a Racial Empire in Africa’.
  
  - the UNIA grew rapidly in cities along the US seaboard and many other places as well, including Nova Scotia, at least in Sydney where there was a community of West Indian immigrants.
  
  - he collected substantial sums of money to found the Black Star Line of steamships to take blacks back to Africa (he never actually specified a location or talked to Africans about whether they wanted this to happen). In fact, he did purchase a couple of old steamers, but no migrations were ever attempted. Garvey himself never visited Africa.
  
  - in a number of ways, Garvey anticipated the ‘Black power’ movement of the 60s & perhaps even more the separatist proposals of Malcolm X; the latter of course thought of creating separate enclaves for black people in the US rather than a return to Africa, but there was the same absence of confidence that equality would be acceptable to whites whose racism was too deeply ingrained; the only option was in separation—an ‘apartheid’ solution.
  
  - Garvey had a meteoric rise and a similar fall as a result of financial mismanagement and US government harassment. He was charged and convicted of fraud and misappropriation of funds in 1925; his sentence was commuted by Pres. Coolidge in 1927 and Garvey was deported to Jamaica.
  
  - nevertheless, Garvey’s ideas had continuing influence; some black churches with a Garveyite orientation had been formed and continued to exist. Later, some even sent missionaries to Africa and thus spread Garveyite ideas there (however, this influence was rather small as the numbers were not large; black churches were too poor to send large numbers of missionaries).
  
  - of more significance were African students studying in the US. One of these was Kwame Nkrumah who later said that Garvey was a more important influence on him than was du Bois.
  
  - this should not be too surprising. Outside South Africa (which we’ll discuss in more detail later), the dilemmas facing diaspora blacks were not very relevant to Africans. Most diaspora blacks were part of multiracial societies and most were minorities dominated and discriminated against; although Africans were a majority in South Africa, their position was pretty much the same—dominated and discriminated against. In South Africa, the same split in objectives occurred. What should black people strive for in a multiracial society?
  
  - du Bois and the ‘equality’ or non-racial tradition works for an end to discrimination and for complete equality; they want to end ‘race’ as a factor in determining rights and status.
  
  - Garvey and the Africanist tradition reject the possibility of a society based on equality and non-racialism. The only alternatives, therefore, are to go back to Africa or create some sort of separate state for black people.
  
  - for most of Africa under colonial rule, this was not really the problem; there were not sufficient whites to create a multiracial society. Thus, the issue was simply whether Africans would control political decision-making. Garvey’s slogan “Africa for the Africans” was tailor-made for their aspirations.
  
  - as noted, Garvey never visited Africa, knew little about it and certainly never consulted Africans about whether or not they wanted millions of assimilated black people of the diaspora to come back to Africa. Where would they go? What would their impact be on African culture? No migrations took place so these questions never had to be faced.
  

• George Padmore (1901-1958)
  - he also had an important influence on pan-Africanism. Padmore was a Trinidadian who lived most of his life in Britain. He became a communist in the 1920s, but became disillusioned and rejected communism by 1933 because he argued that communists were only using Africans and black people for their own purposes.
  
  - he wrote an influential book, Pan-Africanism or Communism, in which he argued that these were the choices facing Africans in their struggle to gain independence. However, as noted, he rejected communism, and therefore, he advocated choosing pan-Africanism.
  
  - he founded the Committee of the International Friends of Ethiopia at the time of the Italian invasion, and he also organised the Pan-African Congress in Manchester in 1945.
  
  - he became a friend and advisor to Nkrumah until his death in 1958.
  

• Kwame Nkrumah (1901-1972)
  - Nkrumah became the main exponent of pan-Africanism in the 1950s and 60s. He lived abroad for many years in the US and Britain as a student etc.
  
  - in 1948 in a new effort to secure a greater roleand voice for Africans in the Gold Coast, he was invited by some of the older leaders to return and become the full-time general secretary of their organisation.
  
  - he recognised the need to form a mass-based movement, and after disagreeing with the older leaders, he formed his own Gold Coast Convention People’s Party. In spite of his being in jail, his party won the election in 1951. Shortly after, he was released and became the first African prime minister and led the Gold Coast/Ghana to responsible government in 1956 and full independence in 1957.
  
  - he was a great believer in unity and the need for cooperation among Africans and he set out to build pan-Africanism in Africa. In 1958, he organised and held the first conference of independent African states; representatives of 8 states, mostly from north Africa, attended.
  
  - in 1960, the second gathering was held in Addis Ababa with the number of states represented up to 15.
  
  - at the 3rd, also in Addis Ababa, the 28 states and governments formed the Organisation of African Unity (OAU). [In 2002, the OAU was replaced by a new organization, the African Union, with a new charter.]
  
  - in the early stages of the OAU, the focus was on assisting all Africa to become independent; this was also the aspect which brought most unanimity. It also remained a focus until very recently with continuing examples of colonialism or white minority rule— Portuguese colonies, Rhodesia, South West Africa/Namibia and especially South Africa.
  
  - the OAU includes Muslim and Arab peoples in north Africa so it is not narrowly racial in its definition of ‘African’. it has not been notably different in the way it operates, nor has supra-nationalism been achieved.
  
  - as long as the leaders talked in general terms about colonialism and their dissatisfactions, then they had a good deal of unity, and they have often worked together at the UN where they have a significant number of votes. However, even on the issues where there were high levels of unity (e.g., South Africa), they often had more unity of rhetoric than of action.
  
  - however, African leaders have also tended to focus on the nation-state and thus there have been boundary disputes and conflicts between African states. Even more, the OAU or African leaderships collectively have been able to do little about horrific problems of African regimes, such as Idi Amin in Uganda or the recurring slaughters in Rwanda and Burundi.
  
  
  - however, Nkrumah’s ideal of pan-Africanism went much beyond this and included a big concern that Africans not repeat the mistakes of Europeans, especially that they not get carried away with extreme forms of nationalism such as had led to the terrible wars and atrocities as occurred in Europe in the 20th C.
  
  - thus, Nkrumah was concerned to create supranational bodies and even governments. Clearly, he hoped that the OAU would be more in line with this vision than it has been. He also tried to create larger unions (at one point he announced a federation with Guinea), but these, like similar attempts among Arab nations (e.g., United Arab Republic and such), were on paper only and were short-lived.
  
  - Nkrumah shows the difficulties and dilemmas. In Ghana, he felt the need to build a sense of national identity in a national state that had been created artificially by colonial conquest and which contained different ethnic and religious groups; some of the techniques he instituted were compared to educational programmes under fascist dictatorships in the 1930s. But at the same time, he tried very energetically to go beyond nationalism in pan-Africanism.
  

1. It affirmed the worth of black people and therefore rejected the inferiority ascribed by racist thought in the late 19th and 20th Cs.
   
   
2. It helped to launch the struggle for rights and equality for black people in the diaspora; although there were advocates of a return migration to Africa, eventually and especially after 1945, black people in the diaspora focused on rights and justice where they lived.
   
   
3. In Africa, it asserted the right of independence for Africans—“Africa for the Africans.”
   
   - in addition to the slogan, Pan-Africanism contributed in at least 3 ways:
   
   • early in the century, for the newly emerging African elite, it was a source of ideas and contacts, especially for students studying abroad;
     
   • it helped to provide an ideology of unity in the process of mass mobilisation of Africans for the independence struggle;
     
   • it also helped to build a constituency in Europe and North America which was sympathetic to and supportive of independence for Africa and this came to form important ‘public opinion’ in the 1950s and 60s.
     
     
4. It held out a lofty ideal for the future of independent Africa. Through pan Africanism, it was hoped that Africa could avoid the terrible mistakes of Europe.
   
   - by emphasising the unity of all African peoples and shared goals and ideals, it was hoped that nationalism would be a positive influence while avoiding the negative features (xenophobia, narrow parochialism, aggressive expansionism, etc.) which have caused so much bloodshed and horror elsewhere.
   

1. Lack of success; in the 1920s, segregation and the colour bar began to be implemented vigorously and protests and delegations were ignored by the white politicians, especially politicians in the National Party.
   
   - in 1936, after 10 years of campaigning, Africans were removed from the common rolls of voters in the Cape Province.
   
   
2. There was a proliferation of alternatives.
   
   • Multi-racial Organisations
     - we noted a number of these earlier. They tended to drain off time and energy from the ANC; many Africans thought that working with whites and people in other racial groups would likely have more chance of success when Africans had so little political influence.
     
     
   • Trade unions and the Industrial and Commercial Workers Union (ICU)
     - under Clements Kadalie (1896-1951—an African from Malawi originally), the ICU had a mushroom growth in the 1920s; many thought that industrial unity and action could be an effective means of improving the lot and position of Africans and non-whites in S. A.
     
     - the ICU attempted to organise on a mass basis (i.e., an industrial union rather than craft unions); unity and broad-based strikes (more like general strikes) would be used to win not only better pay and working conditions (bread & butter issues) but also more rights and freedoms generally.
     
     - neither government nor employers would negotiate, and when forced or dragged into strikes, divisions quickly emerged because many Africans could not or would not support them. The ICU had a fall that was almost as meteoric as its rise.
     
     - communists had ridiculed its non-revolutionary stance, but later they tried to take it over. This merely added to the divisions and squabbles. In 1928, the Natal leader, Allison Champion (1893-1975), split from Kadalie; his ICU yase Natal continued for some years after the demise of the ICU in the Cape, which had been its major stronghold.
     
     
3. Conflicts among the leaders
   - partly, these were ideological; many of the older leaders were strongly opposed to communists.
   
   - however, the conflicts also became a generation struggle; younger leaders were becoming increasingly impatient with the non-confrontational, deferential approach of the older leaders.
   
   - nevertheless, some of it was apparently personal; e.g., Dube and Champion, both Zulus from Natal, were bitter rivals in Natal for most of the 1930s and 40s even though both came to be opposed by the younger leaders in the Youth League, but for different reasons. Champion was a strong Zulu nationalist and had close ties to the Zulu royal house, kind of a preview of Mangusuthu Buthelezi.
   

African Nationalism after 1945

- under Dr. Alfred Xuma (1893-1962), president of the ANC 1939-1949, the ANC was rebuilt and revitalised; Xuma brought in the younger leaders of the Youth League in the 1940s, he worked with the Communist Party after 1944, and he promoted cooperation with the South African Indian Congress late in the war as well.

Q. What are your differences with the A.N.C.?

A First of all we differ radically in our conception of the struggle. We firmly hold that we are oppressed as a subject nation—the African nation. To us, therefore, the struggle is a national struggle. Those of the A.N.C. who are its active policy-makers, maintain, in the face of all the hard facts of the S.A. situation, that ours is a class struggle. We are, according to them, oppressed as WORKERS both white and black. But it is significant that they make no attempt whatsoever to organise white workers. Their white allies are all of them bourgeoise!

Secondly we differ in our attitude to ‘co-operation’ with other national groups. Perhaps it might be better to say we differ in our understanding of the term ‘co-operation.’ We believe that co-operation is possible only between equals. There can be no co-operation between oppressor and oppressed, dominating and dominated. That is collaboration, not co-operation. And we cannot collaborate in our own oppression! The A.N.C leadership, on the other hand, would seem to believe that all that is required for people to be ‘equals’ is that they should declare that they are equals, and lo! the trick is done.

At the present moment the A.N.C. leadership regards anybody and everybody who is against the Nationalist government (for whatever reasons) as allies.

This latter attitude is the result of a mentality that continues to speak of South Africa as though it were an island, completely cut off from the continent and, therefore, able to fashion its own policies and programmes, unrelated to and unaffected by those of the other African States. We, on the other hand, have always been acutely aware of the fact that ours is a particular front in a battle raging across the continent. We claim Afrika for the Africans; the A.N.C. claims South Africa for all. To the A.N.C. leadership the present Nationalist government is the properly elected government of South Africa whose policies, however, it does not approve of. And the A.N.C.’s main struggle is to get the Nats out of power. The fact that the Nats are a logical product of past South African history and that what they stand for is approved and supported by the overwhelming majority of whites in the country has apparently escaped the notice of A.N.C. leadership.

We, however, stand for the complete overthrow of white domination. ....

Q. What is your answer to the accusation that you are anti-white?

A. On the material level we just cannot see any possibility of co-operation. To say that we are prepared to accept anybody who subscribes to our Programme is but to state a condition that one knows cannot be fulfilled. From past history, not only of this country but of other countries as well, we know that a group in a privileged position never voluntarily relinquishes that position. If some members of the group appear to be sympathetic to the demands of the less-privileged, it is only in so far as those demands do not threaten the privileges of the favoured group. If they (the privileged) offer assistance, it is for the purpose of ‘directing’ and ‘controlling’ the struggle of the underprivileged and making sure that it does not become ‘dangerous.’

Q. But are you anti-white or not?

A. What is meant by anti-whiteism? Is it not merely an emotional term without a precise signification? Let me put it this way: In every struggle, whether national or class, the masses do not fight an abstraction. They do not hate oppression or capitalism. They concretise these and hate the oppressor, be he the Governor-General or a colonial power, the landlord or the factory-owner, or, in South Africa, the white man. But they hate these groups because they associate them with their oppression! Remove the association and you remove the hatred. In South Africa then, once white domination has been overthrown and the white man is no longer ‘white-man boss’ but is an individual member of society, there will be no reason to hate him and he will not be hated even by the masses.

We are not anti-white, therefore. We do not hate the European because he is white! We hate him because he is an oppressor. And it is plain dishonesty to say I hate the sjambok and not the one who wields it.

Q. Do you regard all whites as oppressors?

A. We regard them all as shareholders in the S.A. Oppressors Company (Pty.) Ltd. There are whites, of course, who are intellectually converted to our cause, but because of their position materially, they cannot fully identify themselves with the struggle of the African people. They want safeguards and check-points all along the way, with the result that the struggle of the people is blunted, stultified and crushed.

“Discussing the future of Afrika, Padmore observes that ‘there is a growing feeling among politically conscious Africans throughout the continent that their destiny is one, that what happens in one part of Afrika to Africans must affect Africans living in other parts’.

“We honour Ghana as the first independent state in modern Afrika which, under the courageous nationalist leadership of Dr. Nkrumah and the Convention People’s Party, has actively interested itself in the liberation of the whole continent from White domination, and has held out the vision of a democratic United States of Afrika. We regard it as the sacred duty of every African state to strive ceaselessly and energetically for the creation of a United States of Afrika, stretching from Cape to Cairo, Morocco to Madagascar.

“The days of small, independent countries are gone. Today we have, on the one hand, great powerful countries of the world; America and Russia cover huge tracts of land territorially and number hundreds of millions in population. On the other hand the small weak independent countries of Europe are beginning to realise that for their own survival they have to form military and economic federations, hence NATO and the European market.

“Besides the sense of common historical fate that we share with the other countries of Afrika, it is imperative, for purely practical reasons that the whole of Afrika be united into a single unit, centrally controlled. Only in that way can we solve the immense problems that face the continent.”

1. Moral Confrontation
   - civil order requires that most citizens acknowledge the legitimacy of the law and of the government. Thus, most citizens obey the law voluntarily. When large numbers of citizens deliberately break the law and court arrest, this is a powerful statement of moral disapproval of the law and any government which enforces that law.
   
   - also, if that government then proceeds to arrest large numbers and especially if they use violence against their citizens, this is a tacit admission that the government has lost moral authority.
   
   - usually, the message being sent by the civil disobedience is directed to third parties—other citizens in the same country (as in the US civil rights struggle) or to people and governments outside, at the UN, etc.
   
   
2. Administrative Confrontation
   - this is an attempt to overwhelm the system, to overload the prison and court systems with multitudes of law breakers to force the government to change the law.