Paper presented to The Week School on African Affairs, 6th June, 1965.
I do not wish to burden you with a lengthy dissertation oon the evils of what is generally known as Apartheid. This has been done over and over again in the past and no doubt it will be done again and again in the future. I propose to deal at a later stage with the basic policies of my Congress and its approach to the struggle for democracy in South Africa. But allow me first to deal at some length with what we believe to be the crux of the South African problem. Apartheid is, of course, another name for racinalism. Both are familiar words. But the more familiar they become, the more clouded are the issues involved in the struggle for democracy in South Africge The inability to see the issues other than through racial blinkers has spread to alarming dimensions, andbestrides even some of our most learned rostrums. The liberal institutions in Britain - students, both black and white, in the universities and other media of public enlightenment - are befuddled in their thinking by extreme obsession with what may be called anti-racialism. The fashion is to take up an attitude against the evil of racialism because it makes one appear progressive and superior to others. Also, it spares one the trouble of doing some hard thinking to find its causes and provide remedies. All attitudes, as such, are blind things, unthinking. They are therefore equally undesirable whether they be pro-racialism or anti-racialism. The struggle for democracy in South Africa has for a long time been retarded, diverted and blockaded by blind anti-racialist attitudes. Such attitudes are a poor substitute for ideas and well thought out views. Reaction to the racialism of the whites became obsessive anti-racialism even among Africans, who failed to recognise the real issues involved in the struggle and, therefore, carried out faulty planning of campaigns. They saw the South African problem purely in terms of race, and presumed that since therewere white racialists, there must necessarily also be black racialistss Like the German professor who, on seeing a bicycle for the first time, swore that it could not be ridden - for the simple reason that if you did not fall off to the left, you must necessarily fall off to the rightl The Africans, the dispossessed people of South Africa, were often,ex~horted virtually to forgive their dispossessors and never to show racial animosity. Of course, it was merely the animosity which anybody robbed of his land would show against the robber, whether the latter is white, black or yellow, or, indeed, of the sate colour or race. The point I want to make here is that racialism is not the real problem in South Africae This point has to be made sharply. But as we have to bring it out clearly, we will now go straight on to the historical back= ground. During the first contacts between the African people and white settlers in South Africa, there was a lot of mixing between the races, and intermarriages were commm, in spite of the wide gap between cultural backgrounds. But the settlers, who brought along with them knowledge of commerce * Matthew Nkoana is the Chief Representative in Europe of the Pan Africanist Congress (S.A.)
and diversified economic organisation, started off at a great advantage over the simple mode of life of the indigenous people who were mainly pastoralists.
It was only natural that the settlers, who came from a survival-ofthe-fittest type of civilisation, sooner or later took advantage of their position. Once they had thus turned the indigenous people into an economic asset, the latter's freedom had to be curtailed to ensure continuity. Since one does not interfere in this way with the lives of one's equals, thosethus treated must be looked upon as of a different order in society. And so certain relationships developed between the settlers and the indigenous people as befit relations between, at first, master and serf, then master and slave and finally master and servant.
De Kiewiet, in "A History of South Africa", says: "From the very be= ginning there was woven the double strand of South African history: the servile worker and the free colonist, cheap labour and land. These combined to create the habits and institutions of South African society. The white settlers began to look upon labour as the function of a servile race, and became a privileged caste depending upon a an excessive number of slaves and servants whose labour was wastefully employed."
When slavery was outlawed, it became necessary to develop new techniques for the purpose of attaining the same ends: the amassing of wealth by the few which entails the degradation of the many. In South Africa we have the classic example of how these techniques have been perfected. We have there a refined system of slavery in a modern cast. No longer are men seized and sold as a straight-forward commercial deal, but they are still seized and compelled to sell their labour at any price that the buyer chooses. The two different worlds still exist: the one a world of privilege and plenty, created and maintained through the iron fist of ty. ranny; the other a world of misery and grinding poverty, of apartheid restrictions and humiliations.
The “habits and institutions" are today what they were then. These habits and institutions are racialist in orientation, but racialism is the effect rather than the cause of a system of crass economic exploitation. Allow me to quote from another recent paper of my own on the subjects
"This is not to underrate the scourge that is racialism in South Africa. It is a terrible mental disease once it takes hold of the victim, but it is not in the blood; it is not congenital. True, there are many = tragically too many = among white South Africans in whom racialism has become a kind of second nature. But this is not a natural phenomenon. It is fostered and nurtured in the European homes and schools and in public life. The books the children read are littered with the grand myth of the black man's inferiority. But it remains an artificial growth; so artificial, indeed, that it has become necessary to enact legislation to bolster it up and patch up yawning cracks in the racialist wall. Thus we have laws preventing inter-marriagebe tween the races, banning multi-racial worship or social mixing in entertainment, sports and other vulnerable spheres, Without this elaborate intervention from the cradle to the grave, those Whites who know not which side their bread is buttered might multiply enough to disturb the structure of white supremacy and so bring about the end of economic privilege...ccoee
It must be clear not that racialism is not the real problem, not the root of all evil in our land. There is a song that knows what the root of all evil in our land, as in other lands, is! Having made this and other studies of the South African situation, my Congress at its inception in 1959 laid down a grand strategy and combat policies which, because of their insistence that the utmost pressure could only come from the most underprivileged sectionsof the community, the Africans, met with wild charges of racialism from those who are obsessed with anti-racialism, In an article published in that year, the President of P.A.C., Mangaliso Robert Sobukwe, pronounced to the world our position as follows: “It is our contention that the vast illiterate and semi-illiterate masses of Africans are the cornerstone, the key and very life of the struggle for democracy, From this we draw the conclusion that the rousing and consolidation of the masses is the primary task of liberation...We have made our stand clear on this point. Our contention is that the Africans are the only people who, because of their material position, can be interested in the complete overhaul of the present structure of society, We have admitted that there are Europeans who are intellectual converts to the African's cause, but because they benefit materially from the present set-up, they cannot completely identify themselves with that causees." The P,A.C. does not believe that racialism is a monopoly of the whites, That would be racialism, We take a scientific view of the whole question of race, Here again let me quote our President, from his inaugural addresss "The Africanists take the view that there is only one race to which we all belong (the human race)» We do, however, admit the existence of observable physical differences between various groups of people, but these differences are the result of a number of factors, chief among which has been geographical isolation, In Africa the myth of race has been propounded and propagated by the imperialists and colonialists from Europe, in order to facilitate and justify their inhuman exploitation of the indigenous people of the landesee" The imperialists have propagated that myth not only in Africa but in their home countries for the same reasons. They did so to justify in the eyes of their ow people continued occupation of far-away lands against the wishes of the colonial people. The grandmyth of the black man's inferiority has over the ages littered the pages of great works of art by which the thinking of the people of Europe has been influenced in respect o* coloured immigrants, such as here in Britain, bedevilling already evisting cultural differences. From this conclusion, it must be clear that, while we do not think racialism is a monopoly of the whites, no valid argument can be advanced that Africans are vulnerable to the evil. Unless there were some unworthy notive for it, one cannot imagine Africans suddenly acquiring notions that cther people are inferior to them. We live in the age of science and, as Snbukwe puts its "All scientists agree that there is no ‘race’ that is superior to others." What unworthy ulterior motivescan there be? The only social motivation of this kind could be economic gain. As this is essente ially a political question, it can be answered in terms of our policies on socio-economic development in a new South Africas
Sobukwe has said: "Politically we stand for government of the Africans for the Africans by the Africans, with everybody who owes his lyalty only to Africa and accepts the democratic rule of an African majority, being regarded as an African, We guarantee no minority rights because we are fighting precisely that group-exclusiveness which those who plead for minority rights would like to perpetuate. It is our view that if we have guaranteed individual liberties, we have given the highest guarantee necessary and possible. I have said before and I still say so now, that I see no reason why, in a free democratic Africa, a predominantly black electorate should not return a white man to Parliament, for colour will count for nothing in a free Africa,"
The 1959 Pan-Africanist Manifesto is illumingtive: "The basic question confronting the African people is identical with that which faced mankind from the beginning of time itself: the problem of man's relation to his fellow man, It is the question of how man shall live with his fellow man in fellowship, in harmony and in peace.
"Man moves and has his being in a social environment. In the absence of social life the social question would fall away. Man's relation to his fellow man is determined by his primary needs. The social question, whose structural foundations are found in economic determinism, arises within the framework of social relations,
"Man is, therefore, a social being and not an economic animal. To live in harmony with his fellow man, man must recognise the primacy of the material and spiritual interests of his fellow man, and must climinate the tendency on his part to uphold his own interests at the expense of those of his fellow men. It is only within such a set-up that the human personality can be developed and that respect for it can be fostered,"
In a word, the P.A.C. is imbued with a deep sense of humanity and social justice. Even though writing while in South Africa, where anything that rejects the present social set-up goes by the name of outlawed Communism, the President said in an article in 1959: "Economically we stand for planned economy and the most equitable distribution of wealth, I have said that to me at least, the slogan of “equal opportunities" is meaningless if it does not take equality of income as the springboard from which all will take off," The rationale in relation to the principle of equality of income takes off from the premise that the families (with special reference to children) of university professors and street sweepers have the same needs, material and spiritual interests are the same, and they are equally entitled to the benefits of a social set-up within which the human personality can be developed and respect for it fostered,
One of the aims of the Constitution, the only such document in South Africa that refers to Socialism as a goal, is to create an Africanist Socialist Democracy, which means Socialism grafted to African conditions,
The most powerful motive force in the struggle for democracy in South Africa is African nationalism. The people of South Africa, albeit as separate tribes have a glorious past, a proud tradition of struggle in defence of their land, Today the various tribes have forged bonds of unity and areemerging as a nation. They have behind them a common historical experience as a dispossessed people, They are acutely aggrieved by this dispossession,
The least the international community can do to help them is to endorse their right to fight, by whatever means they deem fit, for the restoration to themselves of the effective control of their land. Here one may recall with gratitude, that at least one West-orientated world body has endorsed this right. The World Assembly of Youth last year, noting that "State acts of violence and repression, including ruthless methods of suppression and proscription of the national liberation movement, have eliminated all possibilities for effective peaceful resistance to tyranny" said in a resolution that it "recognises that it is the right of the people of South Africa to revolt against the tyrannical South African regime," After 300 years of subjugation, economic abuse and social debasement, it is crystal clear that the only way by which the South African question can be resolved is a full-scale, efficiently organised armed revolutions A revolutionary climate already exists in South Africa, But to carry out the operation successfully we need tremendous resources of a material and technical nature, We ask the international community to assist us undere take this herculean task,