The tough, difficult road that has led to our democracy
Many illustrious names from different races and backgrounds travelled this path
FORMING part of the Congress Alliance was the South African Congress of Trade Unions. Sactu’s formation was a defiance of the divide-andrule of the state which was against non-racial unions. In March, 1955, through break-ups traversing the episodes of the Trade Union Councils of South Africa (Tucsa) and the Trade Union Co-ordinating Committee and the Council of Non-European Trade Union, Sactu was formed without the burden of racial categorisation.
The journey to March, 1955, was so thorny that if we were to undermine it by reverting to the racialism before it, we would be paying the biggest compliment to our apartheid past. But if we undermine the non-racial outcome of Sactu, Cosatu’s forebear, we would be spitting in the face of one of the finest ANC leaders to come out of Sactu – the late Reggie September.
The Freedom Charter was not an exclusively African affair. It was one milestone which embraced all races and people from all walks of life, represented by mixed delegates of about 2 844 South Africans. The Charter’s Preamble proclaims that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white. Of course, the specific non-mentioning of coloured and Indian was deliberate, because the Charter recognises them within the singular Blackness. Despite the efforts of the apartheid government to divide and subdivide its population, the unity of Africans, coloured and Indians in their blackness, ought to stand the test of time.
The Statement of Policy in the ANC’s Annual Report of 1958, commitment to non-racialism, was expressed. The statement acknowledged that it was essential to work with all forces that are prepared to struggle for the same ideas. The commitment echoed the views of the President-General, Chief Luthuli, who had rejected the state’s efforts to dismantle the Congress Alliance. Luthuli chaired the whole Congressional Movement and expected its constituents to “canalise” their objectives to the broad objectives of the ANC.
He did so not out of imposition, but because these constituent parts also expected the ANC to lead. This expectation still exists as any stumble in our common journey to full nationhood is expected from us. But the expectation is also because the ANC has proclaimed itself to be a leader of society. Leading a society as complex as South Africa’s requires solid adherence to principles. One such principle is anti-racism.
Luthuli also provided his wisdom on the goal of non-racialism when he said: “I believe here in South Africa, with all our diversities of colour and race, we will show the world a new pattern of democracy. There is a challenge for us to show a new example for all. Let us not sidestep this task.”
President Oliver Reginald Tambo, his successor, echoed the same sentiments when he said: “We had to forge an alliance of strength based not on colour but on commitment to the total abolition of apartheid and oppression; we would seek allies, of whatever colour, as long as they were totally agreed on our liberation aims.”
In 1961, Umkhonto we Sizwe was formed. There was no race test and the threshold was determined by those who were ready to pay the supreme prize for the liberation of their country. Among those who were prepared to lay down their lives were Joe Slovo,
Braam Fischer, Reggie September, Ronnie Kasrils, Arthur Goldreich and many others.
The 1967 Wankie and Sipolilo campaigns led to skirmishes against apartheid and Rhodesia. The gallantry of MK soldiers was across colour lines. One of the heroes was Basil February, whose gallantry is missing in the accounts of MK’s achievements. He was a student of Trafalgar High School who was refused permission to study law by the minister of education, and later prime minister John Vorster.
February joined the Luthuli Detachment under Commander Lennox Lagu (nom de guerre General Tshali). He was among many coloured comrades who joined Umkhonto we Sizwe and who graduated to the detachment.
The passing away of legendary human rights lawyer George Bizos brings into sharp focus how an individual of Greek descent, who could have enjoyed the benefits of apartheid, decided to offer his legal skills to fight for the freedom of all South Africans.
Escaping Nazism in his native Greece, he arrived in South Africa in 1941 in the middle of World War II. He defended ANC leaders in the 1956 to 1961 Treason Trial as well as during the 1963 Rivonia Trial. All South Africans mourn his death.
The heroism and sacrifice of these episodes in our history knew no colour and the blood that was lost was not African, Indian, coloured or white; it was a South African blood yearning for freedom. Space is too limited to mention all South Africans who were prepared to lay down their lives. The magic about their participation against apartheid was not that they were South Africans, but that the system had been designed to separate them.
The involvement of non-Africans in the Struggle broadly included comrades who also provided legal defence to leaders and ordinary ANC members. Names of South Africans of Jewish descent such as Isie Maisels, Arthur Chaskalson, Sidney Kentridge, Joel Joffe, Shulamith Muller, Denis Kuny, Jules Browde formed the legal bodyguard of our Struggle. They sometimes provided legal services pro bono.
Many political activists and leaders complemented these legal minds. They included Lionel and Hilda Bernstein, Ruth First, Arthur Goldreich, Harold Wolpe, Ben Turok, Dennis Goldberg, Wolfie Kodesh, Paul Trewhela, the Coleman family, conscientious objector David Bruce, Pauline Podbrey and Raymond Suttner.
In the 1980s and early 1990s, a new cadre of South Africans of Indian descent such as individuals Yunus Mahomed, Paul David, Krish Naidoo, Shun Chetty in their non-racial National Association of Democratic Lawyers (Nadel collective), took up the task of defending mainly African detainees who had no means to afford lawyers and took on most of their cases pro bono as a contribution to the Struggle for a free South Africa. They did so at great risk to themselves as individuals and as activists, but also to their legal practices as professionals.
From April 25 to May 1, 1969, the Morogoro Consultative Conference brought together leaders and 70 delegates representing ANC branches, units of MK, leaders of coloured and Indian peoples and the leaders of the revolutionary working-class movements. They were to deliberate, among other matters, on the participation in the Struggle of all South Africans. The conference also decided to pare down the National Executive Committee (NEC) and integrate the political and military leadership to form the Revolutionary Council chaired by Tambo and which included Dr Yusuf Dadoo and Reggie September.
Despite its strides in accommodating members of other races in the Revolutionary Council, it was only in Kabwe, Zambia, in 1985 that the delegates overwhelmingly decided that ANC membership should be open to all South African revolutionaries who accepted the programme and policy of the ANC irrespective of race or colour.
This decision meant that membership was open to all levels of the movement, including the highest leading organ – the National Executive Committee. The main reasons for adopting this step were that the ANC is today the leader of all South Africans from all racial groups. Comrades from other racial groups have laid down their lives for the cause of freedom.
One of the “Four Pillars” of the Struggle – international mobilisation and solidarity (the other three were mass mobilisation, armed operations and underground organisations) enhanced the ANC’s non-racial ethos. Drawing fraternal organisations and progressive individuals into its fold, the ANC was joined by nationals of states where it had established its presence, and in many capitals outnumbering where the apartheid state had established its embassies. These foreign progressives joined the ANC struggles and operations at great risk to themselves.
Two examples will suffice. The first was Mr Alexis Moumbaries. He was a French trade unionist born in Egypt who emigrated to Australia. In 1973, he arrived in South Africa to join the nascent trade union movement but was arrested for aiding the “terrorist” ANC by distributing pamphlets and reconnoitring sea-born landings in the “independent” Transkei.
The recce mission showed the extent to which international solidarity comrades were prepared to open a naval front as a complementary element of the armed Struggle. The recce was in preparation for Operation J (a plan to infiltrate MK soldiers from the Transkei to obviate the challenges that had been experienced in Wankie and Sipolilo). In 1973, Moumbaries was sentenced to 12 years’ imprisonment, but in 1979 he escaped from Pretoria Central Prison with two other South African white detainees, Tim Jenkin and Steven Lee, using a set of wooden keys.
The second group were the London Recruits. Formed by a variety of ideological persuasions from the London School of Economics’ young students, there were Trotskyites, Marxists and socialists. They were experts at pamphleteering and graffiti painting, popularising the ANC just when the apartheid regime thought the movement had disappeared into the dungeons of exile or was contained within the walls of imprisonment.
They were organised by Comrades Ronnie Kasrils and George Bridges of the Young Communist League in 1967. They assisted the ANC’s propaganda, matching pound for pound apartheid’s propaganda machinery which had unlimited resources.
The 1983 formation of the United Democratic Front (UDF) was a backhand retort to the apartheid government which had tried to forge a non-racialism of its own by co-opting gullible Indian and coloured leaders into a Tricameral Parliament.
The birth of the UDF gave to the Struggle the young revolutionary, Mr Ashley Kriel. Known as the Che Guevara of Bounteheuwel in the Cape Flats, at the age of 20 he joined Umkhonto we Sizwe and was trained in Angola. Slipping back into the country on July 9, 1989, he was shot by the apartheid security forces at just 20 years old, joining Solomon Mahlangu as one of the youngest revolutionaries to lose his life in his struggle for a free South Africa.
Indian and coloured UDF members and constituent organisations could have chosen to club together with the government to exclude Africans from decision-making. Instead, they forwent what little privileges the Tricameral experiment would bring them, and chose to align with African aspirations.
The decision on non-racialism was not without its birth pains. There were secessionists and dissidents. Even when they faced a secession in defence of non-racialism in 1959, the ANC soldiered on, convinced of its superior argument of the future of South Africa being democratic, non-racial and non-sexist and a prosperous state.
In 1975, the ANC suffered dissent when the Group of Eight walked away, complaining that non-racialism was equal to domination by minorities. Again, the presence of non-Africans was used to promote a different agenda from what the conference had intended to achieve. Out of about 70 or 80 delegates, there were only three coloureds, five Indians and three whites. Most of the deliberations were conducted and argued by Africans mostly from the rank and file delegates and MK.
Two final words which should continue to oil our commitment to non-racism: the first was from the icon of the Black Consciousness Movement, Steven Bantu Biko, who said: “We believe in our country there shall be no minority, there shall be no majority; there shall just be people. Those people will have the same status before the law and they will have the same political rights before the law. In this instance, it will be a completely non-racial egalitarian society.”
The second is from Tambo, who said: “It is our responsibility to break down the barriers of division and create a country where there shall be neither whites nor blacks, just South Africans, free and united in diversity.”