One Hundred Years of the ANC

Ineke Kessel, Roger Southall, Crain Soudien, Jon Soske, Vladimir Shubin, Saul John, Noor Nieftagodien, Joel Netshitenzhe, Hugh Macmillan, Arianna Lissoni, Liz Gunner, Norman Etherington, Natasha Erlank, Susan Booysen, Phil Bonner, Franco Barchiesi, Omar Badsha, Thozama April

Description

Indexed in Clarivate Analytics Book Citation Index (Web of Science Core Collection)
First Keynote Address

Fragmentation and Cohesion in the ANC: The First 70 Years - Philip Bonner

Second Keynote Address

A Continuing Search for Identity: Carrying the Burden of History - Joel Netshitenzhe

Chapter 1 One Hundred Years of the ANC: Debating Struggle History After Apartheid - Jon Soske, Arianna Lissoni and Natasha Erlank

Chapter  2 Religion And Resistance In Natal, 1900–1910 - Norman Etherington

Chapter 3 Christianity and African Nationalism in South Africa in the First Half of the Twentieth Century - Natasha Erlank

Chapter 4 Charlotte Maxeke: A Celebrated and Neglected Figure in History - Thozama April

Chapter 5 Imagining the Patriotic Worker: The Idea of ‘Decent Work’ in the ANC’s Political Discourse - Franco Barchiesi

Chapter 6 Popular Movements, Contentious Spaces and the ANC, 1943–1956 - Noor Nieftagodien

Chapter 7 Unravelling the 1947 ‘Doctors’ Pact’: Race, Metonymy and the Evasions of Nationalist History - Jon Soske

Chapter 8 The Politics of Language and Chief Albert Luthuli’s funeral, 30 July 1967 - Liz Gunner

Chapter 9 Robben Island University Revisited - Crain Soudien

Chapter 10 Shishita: A Crisis in the ANC in Exile in Zambia, 1980–81 - Hugh Macmillan

Chapter 11 Comrade Mzwai - Vladimir Shubin

Chapter 12 Revisiting Sekhukhuneland: Trajectories of Former UDF Activists in Post-Apartheid South Africa - Ineke van Kessel

Chapter 13 Regeneration of ANC Political Power, from the 1994 Electoral Victory to the 2012 Centenary - Susan Booysen

Chapter  14 The ANC: Party Vanguard of the Black Middle Class? - Roger Southall

Chapter 15 Globalisation, Recolonisation and the Paradox of Liberation in Southern Africa - John S Saul

Sujets

• Post-Colonialism
• Political Science
• HISTORY
• África
• General officer
• History of Africa
• Colonialism
• General
• Africa

Informations

• Publié par: WITS University Press
• Date de parution: 01 novembre 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781868148486
• Langue: English

Extrait

ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF THE ANC
DEBATING LIBERATION HISTORIES TODAY
EDITED BY
ARIANNA LISSONI, JON SOSKE, NATASHA ERLANK, NOOR NIEFTAGODIEN AND OMAR BADSHA
Published in 2012 in South Africa by:
Wits University Press
Post Office Wits, 2050, South Africa
www.witspress.co.za
and
South African History Online
266 Lower Main Road, Observatory, 7925, Cape Town, South Africa
http://www.sahistory.org.za/
Published Edition ©Wits University Press 2012
Compilation ©Edition Editors 2012
Chapters ©Individual Contributors 2012
Photographs © Individual Photographers 2012
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher, except in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act, Act 98 of 1978.
ISBN: 978-1-86814-573-7 (Print)
ISBN: 978-1-86814-848-6 (Digital)
Edited by: Pat Tucker
Design and Layout: Bernadette Ontong
Cover Design: Omar Badsha, Mads Nørgaard, Deidre Mackenna, Bernadette Ontong and
Hothouse South Africa
Cover Art: Mads Nørgaard
Printed and bound in South Africa by Creda Communications
Contents First Keynote Address: Fragmentation and Cohesion in the ANC: The First 70 Years 1 Second Keynote Address: A Continuing Search for Identity: Carrying the Burden of History 13 Chapter One: One Hundred Years of the ANC: Debating Struggle History After Apartheid 29 Chapter Two: Religion And Resistance In Natal, 1900-1910 55 Chapter Three: Christianity and African Nationalism in South Africa in the First Half of the Twentieth Century 77 Chapter Four: Charlotte Maxeke: A Celebrated and Neglected Figure in History 97 Chapter Five: Imagining the Patriotic Worker: The Idea of Decent Work in the ANC s Political Discourse 111 Chapter Six: Popular Movements, Contentious Spaces and the ANC, 1943-1956 135 Chapter Seven: Unravelling the 1947 Doctors Pact : Race, Metonymy and the Evasions of Nationalist History 163 Chapter Eight: The Politics of Language and Chief Albert Luthuli s funeral, 30 July 1967 191 Chapter Nine: Robben Island University Revisited 211 Chapter Ten: Shishita: A Crisis in the ANC in Exile in Zambia, 1980-811 233 Chapter Eleven: Comrade Mzwai 255 Chapter Twelve: Revisiting Sekhukhuneland: Trajectories of Former UDF Activists in Post-Apartheid South Africa 275 Chapter Thirteen: Regeneration of ANC Political Power, from the 1994 Electoral Victory to the 2012 Centenary 301 Chapter Fourteen: The ANC: Party Vanguard of the Black Middle Class? 325 Chapter Fifteen: Globalisation, Recolonisation and the Paradox of Liberation in Southern Africa 347 Contributors 367 Index 372
Acknowledgements
This book is based on a selection of papers presented at the One Hundred Years of the ANC: Debating Liberation Histories and Democracy Today Conference held at the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg from 20-23 September 2011. All the papers presented at the conference are available at:
http://www.sahistory.org.za/abstracts-and-papers-o
Many people have been involved in the production of this book. As editors, we would particularly like to thank Arianna Lissoni for all the work that she has put into the book and for co-ordinating all our efforts. We would also like to thank the excellent staff at Wits Press for helping us to bring this book out in record time. A note of thanks too, to the funders of the conference from which this book arose: the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, South African History Online, the University of Johannesburg and the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.
Editorial Note
One Hundred Years of the ANC begins with two keynote addresses delivered at the event which gave rise to this volume. Conferences often get lost in the proceedings which succeed them, turning the instance of the creation of a debate into a footnote. We did not want the profoundly important and framing issues which both speakers raised to be eclipsed by this more academic interpolation of the conference s content. Philip Bonner, one of South Africa s most prominent social historians, delivered a paper taking in his many years as an activist and historian. His consideration of the factors which have held, and continue to hold, the ANC together, and his focus on the history of fragments, helped to shape the contributions present here. The address by Joel Netshitenzhe, a member of the ANC National Executive Committee at the time of publication, and long-time ANC strategist, casts the ANC s success and continuing national importance in terms of its ongoing search for identity and transformation. The chapters that follow are chronologically ordered.
First Keynote Address
Fragmentation and Cohesion in the ANC: The First 70 Years
Philip Bonner
In mid-2011 Gwede Mantashe, secretary-general of the African National Congress (ANC), chided the media for its preoccupation with splits in the party and asked the question: is the ANC no more than its fragments? That is a question which deserves serious attention and which, I believe, lies at the core of South African politics today. Are the ANC fragments – which definitely exist – destined, ultimately and decisively, to split apart, or is there some deeper source of cohesion, which, whatever the slices that shear away, will hold the wider body together?
Considering cohesion first, there seem currently to be two broad sources. The first is the immense resources of patronage which lie at the ANC’s disposal. As we have seen in the past decade, however, this is very much a two-edged sword, where competition for control over such resources repeatedly threatens to break the ANC apart. The second, which, one might contend, is the real glue that holds the ANC together, is a history of struggle. This history of struggle has been mobilised repeatedly since 2004 to energise the ANC’s base and hold competing factions together – and nowhere more so than in the party’s centenary year, 2012 – but to which appeal is also constantly made by rival fragments or factions as they try to represent themselves as the authentic custodians of the ANC’s past – and its struggle. What this means – and this is counter-intuitive in an age in which the youth has manifestly never been more uninterested in the past – is that history matters. This is obviously apparent in the Youth League’s nationalisation programme, but also in the lionisation under the Mbeki administration of Pixley ka Isaka Seme as a prototype for African businessmen. This is a lesson which leaders of the more traditional rural sectors of our society have always comprehended – history is a key political resource. You cannot do without it, it has to be controlled.
What this is leading us towards, or has led us towards, is an explosion of amateur and instrumental history. At its extreme this can take us towards the gross deformities of what Terence Ranger has termed Patriotic History in Zimbabwe. 1 But even in its more ordinary versions, it presents problems to what I might term the professional historian. As history becomes more politically instrumental, it tends to be more homogenised and stripped down. Inconsistencies, the ignoble, even the human, get airbrushed out. Most critically, failures cannot be adequately addressed because the grand narrative of struggle is ultimately heroic and correct. At the same time, as history becomes more politically serviceable it becomes more boring and predictable, since it is always the authorised version of the established grand narrative to which appeal is made.
This leads me to the conclusion that the most interesting history of the ANC currently is that which comes out of the fragments. This does not deny the grand narrative but provides divergent local perspectives and a much richer understanding of the sum of the parts. Once one steps back in this way and focuses on the fragments, the one hundred-year history of the ANC represents both a treasure trove of extraordinary episodes, magnetic personalities and instructive moments and a Pandora’s box out of which something uncomfortable or unsettling is always likely to emerge. This book and the conference from which it stems is, as I see it, committed to uncovering that treasure trove and opening that box. This, I believe, stands in sharp contrast to the principal thrust of the centenary celebrations of the ANC. For then the Pandora’s box is likely to be tightly clamped down.
In this address I want to explore some of the less familiar moments and themes that the rich treasure trove of struggle history contains. I focus mainly, but not exclusively, on the ANC and on the sweep of that history from the early twentieth century to the unbanning of the ANC and other political parties in February 1990, with an emphasis, especially, on the period up to the 1970s.
From its foundation, the ANC sought to appeal to and, more infrequently, to mobilise a number of distinct and potentially conflictual constituencies. These were, first, the traditional leaders of South Africa – its kings and its chiefs; second, South Africa’s Christian educated elite – its doctors, lawyers, journalists, clergymen and teachers; third, its urban masses and fourth its rural populace. Since the 1950s, and more especially the 1980s, South Africans have been accustomed to conceding primary political weight to the role of the urban masses. For both periods, this is at least partly true. However, when this urban bias is read back into the entire history of the ANC, it is profoundly distorting. For much of the twentieth century, the urban masses barely featured as a major national political force. This was the consequence of two related factors, of which most contemporary South Africans are aware, but whose political implications are rarely grasped. These were the success, until the mid-1940s, of the twin systems of urban racial residential segregation and migrant labour, which, betw