Roberts A.D. The Cambridge History of Africa, Volume 7: from 1905 to 1940

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1924—194°

relation to a Bill for which it is claimed that it is going to make South Africa

safe for European civilisation...This Bill says that even the most educated

Native shall never have political equality with even the least educated and the

least cultured White or Coloured man. This Bill says to these educated Natives:

'There is no room for you, you must be driven back upon your own people.'

But we drive them back in hostility and disgruntlement, and do not let us forget

this,

that all that this Bill is doing for those educated Natives is to make them

the leaders of their own people, in disaffection and revolt.

Interestingly, Hofmeyr did not choose to resign after making this

notable prophecy (though he did resign, on a lesser issue, two

years later). More important, though, was the question whether

'educated natives' would make do with what little they had been

given. The All-African Convention met again in June. Jabavu

compared the loss of common-roll voting to the recent Italian

invasion of Ethiopia: both events had scratched the ' European

veneer and revealed the white savage beneath'.

Yet both ANC

and CPSA leaders agreed to participate in elections under the new

system, and Congress organisation began to revive in response

to this practical objective.

Segregation was intensified in 1937 by the Native Laws

Amendment Act. This empowered the Union government to

prevent employers housing Africans on their own premises, to

restrict African entry to towns and to enforce the removal of

unemployed Africans; the latter measures were a corollary of

artificial wage-fixing

and also served to increase the supply of

labour to white farmers. Restrictions were also placed on the

African right to buy urban freeholds. Belated efforts were made

by municipal authorities to provide housing for African workers,

but the cost was artificially inflated by the use of white labour.

The Slums Act of 1934 did not apply to Africans, and in general

their living conditions in towns remained miserably cramped and

unhealthy: not only proper shelter but basic sanitation was

frequently denied them.

In this social climate, it was not to be expected that the state

would make more generous provision for African education; this

was widely feared by whites as a threat to jobs and political

supremacy. The subsidies which financed most of the mission

schools' recurrent expenditure were still mainly derived from

" 6 April 1936; quoted by Alan Paton,

Hofmeyr

(Cape Town, 1964), 227-8.

Presidential Address to the All-African Convention (Lovedale, 1936), 3.

See below, p. 595.

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African taxation. In 1939 the state spent £2 a year on each black

pupil, compared with £25 on each white pupil. In the Cape,

schools were free for Africans; elsewhere, they had to pay annual

fees of around

School enrolment continued to increase in

Johannesburg and the Orange Free State, but in the Union as a

whole only one in three black children of school age was attending

school in 1939. Moreover, a black child in Natal or the Transvaal

was half as likely to be in school as one in the Cape, where the

Methodists (the largest white-run church among Africans) had

made special efforts. Besides, few black children spent more than

three years in school, and classes of over a hundred were

commonplace. A white child was ten times more likely than a

black child in a primary school to advance to secondary education.

This expanded rapidly in the Cape in the later 1930s, but by 1939

there were still barely

5,000

Africans in secondary schools

throughout the Union, and most were in the first year; another

1,500 were in industrial schools. In 1939 there were 162 students

at Fort Hare, and 31 obtained degrees or diplomas.

Overstretched mission schools could clearly do little to repair

the damage done to African societies by the demands of capital

and the defence of white supremacy. Migrant labour undermined

marriage and parental authority; absent fathers lost touch with

ancestral spirits; and in both town and countryside the sense of

community was eroded. In 1937 the Natives Representative

Council called for more schools in towns as a means of curbing

lawlessness among the young; its pleas were echoed by some

white administrators. But though schools might make little

difference to most Africans, the churches which ran them radiated

a great, if often indirect, influence. Among people whose social

relations had been disrupted by industrialisation and the colour

bar, Christianity exerted a powerful appeal as a source of social

solidarity as well as personal faith: in 1936, half the African

population was recorded as Christian. Of

these,

about a third (one

million) belonged to some 500 independent churches, which

flourished in the reserves, on white farms and in the towns,

especially on the Rand. For literate Africans, running a church

of their own went some way towards fulfilling aspirations that

were thwarted by paternalist white missionaries as well as by

politicians. Many more were drawn to' Zionist' churches in which

they could find emotional release in song and dance from the harsh

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discipline of wage-labour, and whose prophets practised faith-

healing. 'And death comes to the Bantu location. It comes often.

Then the Church is close at hand, and its fellowship, in a strange

and bitter world, is reassuring and full of warmth.

>38

Meanwhile African workers were improving their defences.

While white trade unions doubled their strength between 1934

and 1939, a growing minority of black workers were also

becoming more settled in towns and were thus more amenable

to organisation. In 1935 a white Communist, Max Gordon,

reinvigorated the one surviving African union on the Rand,

helped to found others and enlisted practical aid from white

liberals. African unions were still denied any legal right to

negotiate with employers, but they could exert some leverage.

From 1930, industrial councils of white unionists and employers

had been able to protect whites from undercutting by setting

minimum wages for African labour, and by 1938 the wages of

some 10,000 Africans were so regulated. From 1937, moreover,

the Wage Board was able to recommend wages below a' civilised'

(i.e.

white) standard. African unions pressed for minimum wage

determinations and had some success in claiming wages due but

not paid. By 1939 there were over twenty African unions in the

Transvaal and as many more elsewhere. White union leaders in

the South African Trades and Labour Council

called for the

recognition of African unions. The government now favoured

this as a means of control, but it was thwarted in 1940 by

concerted opposition from the mine companies who feared a

breach in their hitherto effective barriers to African union activity.

There were also new attempts to articulate protest across rather

than along the lines of'race'. In the Coloured community, many

younger people were more impressed by Communism than by the

vain efforts of the APO to gain entry to the white ruling class.

In December 1935 Abdurahman's daughter, Mrs Z. Gool, helped

to found a National Liberation League to fight on behalf of

Africans and Asians as well as Coloured people: this was also a

direct challenge to the racially-exclusive ANC. In 1936 Commun-

ists helped Coloured and African workers to form a single union

in the docks and railways at Cape Town; in 1937 Asian and

B. G. M. Sundkler, Bantu

prophets in South

Africa (London, 1948, 2nd ed. 1961), 86;

see also chapter 3.

« This had replaced the Trade Union Congress in 1930.

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African ironworkers struck together in Durban, and soon after-

wards Asian and African sugarworkers formed a union in Natal.

In 1938 the NLL created a workers' Non-European United Front

and in March 1939 a demonstration by the Front in Cape Town

induced the government to veto provincial plans to enforce urban

segregation. Meanwhile, the Front also attracted younger Indians

who were tired of the intensely communal politics of the South

African Indian Congress; when Indian rights in the Transvaal,

already curbed in 1932, were further circumscribed in 1939, the

Front organised passive resistance.

Divided rulers

The wealth derived by South Africa from the gold boom in the

1930s was chiefly used to intensify the colour bar and protect the

material living-standards of whites, especially Afrikaners. None-

theless, old tensions within the white population became ever

more acute. Fusion in 1934 had been supported by most English-

speaking whites but by only half the Afrikaners. The prepon-

derance of the United Party in parliament was less significant than

the growing strength of Malan's Purified Nationalist Party. This

acknowledged that about as many Afrikaners now lived in towns

as on farms. More than ever before, Afrikaners were directly

threatened not only by black labour but by the economic and

cultural hegemony of English-speaking whites. These still domin-

ated South African business and industry, the civil service and

the professions, and their press, closely linked to mining interests,

enjoyed

near-monopoly in the major

cities.

There

was,

moreover,

the danger presented by labour leaders who invoked 'foreign'

notions of class conflict in order to unite workers across linguistic,

and even racial, divisions. In opposing such enemies, the Purified

Nationalists had full backing from the Broederbond, which Malan

himself joined in 1933. The Broederbond played a crucial, if

covert, part in the creation of new Afrikaner institutions: in 1934

the Volkskas Bank and a railwaymen's union; in 1937 the

Transva/er

newspaper (edited by H. Verwoerd). And among the

most militant, the defence of Afrikanerdom involved attacks on

Jews,

who by 1940 formed about a fifth of the white population

of Johannesburg and were feared not only as powerful business-

men but also as radicals in trade unions. In 1937 the Purified

Nationalists sought (though in vain) to ban Jewish immigration.

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While Malan's party put Afrikaner integrity above white unity,

the ruling United Party pursued an uneasy compromise between

alliance with Britain and dreams of

Greater South Africa. In 1933

Hertzog renewed his attempts in 1924-6 to secure the incorpor-

ation in the Union of the High Commission Territories, though

subsequent discussions with Britain had no practical result. Both

Smuts and Hertzog regarded the Union as the ultimate guarantor

of white civilisation in Africa, and it was in that capacity, as well

as in support of the League of Nations, that South Africa joined

New Zealand in pressing for full sanctions against Italy after its

invasion of Ethiopia in 1935. The attitude of the Fusion

government to Hitler's Germany was ambivalent. It was united

in opposing German claims to South West Africa, and Smuts was

also much alarmed by German ambitions in Europe, but he now

had little influence on foreign policy. South Africa increased its

imports from Germany, mainly at the expense of Britain, and by

1938 Germany was the principal customer for South African

wool.

This trend was especially furthered by the pro-Nazi

Oswald Pirow, who had been a ruthless minister of justice in

1929-33 and thereafter combined portfolios for defence and

transport. Pirow nationalised South Africa's airline in 1933 and

equipped it with German aircraft; by 1937 he had expanded the

airline's operations at the expense of Britain's Imperial Airways,

not only within the Union but northwards as far as Kenya. Yet

South Africa's coastline was still defended by the British navy,

and the Union spent comparatively little on its own army and

airforce, despite a sharp rise in defence spending in 1937.

In the general election of 1938, the Purified Nationalists

launched a

fiercely

xenophobic campaign and increased their seats

from 20 to 27; they did still better in terms of

votes.

Later in the

year they had a further opportunity to advance their cause in the

centenary celebrations for the Voortrekkers, from which Hertzog

was excluded (he had condemned the Broederbond in 1935). The

election was also notable for the advent to parliament of the first

whites to represent Africans. Of the three elected in the Cape,

Margaret Ballinger and Donald Molteno at once proved trenchant

reporters on the condition of Africans and hard-hitting critics of

the government; they explicitly opposed the system whereby they

However, of the Union's three principal trading partners, it

was

the USA which most

rapidly expanded

its

trade with the Union during the

1950s;

its exports of motor vehicles

and chassis increased threefold.

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were elected, and were the only whites to be formally associated

with the ANC. Two of the senators, Edgar Brookes and J. D.

Rheinallt Jones, were also diligent spokesmen for African

interests, though they reflected the tension, characteristic of the

Joint Councils and the Institute of Race Relations (founded in

1929),

between a theoretical liberal commitment to the 'assimi-

lation ' of Africans and

more pragmatic, if paternalist, acceptance

of segregation.

Britain's declarationof war against Germany in September 1939

was a turning-point in white South African politics. Hertzog

stood out for neutrality, both to assert South African independence

and to promote white unity: many Afrikaners felt that the war

was no concern of

theirs,

while others openly supported the Nazis.

Smuts pressed for alliance with Britain as vital to South Africa's

security (and its mandate over South West Africa). The House

of Assembly gave Smuts 80 votes and Hertzog

67.

Smuts became

prime minister and leader of a diminished United Party whose

support was now concentrated among English-speakers. Hert-

zog's career was over; Malan's Purified Nationalists now emerged

as the principal Afrikaner party. The battle-lines of the post-war

years were being drawn.

South West Africa

Conditions in South West Africa were unaffected by South

Africa's responsibility as a League of Nations mandatory. Both

black and white local interests were subordinated to those of the

Union. In 1925 whites were given representation in a legislative

assembly with powers still less than those of provincial govern-

ments in the Union: the administrator remained virtually supreme.

There was no appreciable economic growth between the wars.

Export values failed to match those of

1913

(£

3.5

except in 193o

and 1938-40. The production of diamonds, now in South African

ownership, was strictly regulated to suit the convenience of South

African producers: output was restricted in the early 1920s and

exports virtually ceased between 1931 and 1935. Exports of

copper and lead from Tsumeb, near Otavi, were resumed in 1925

but more or less suspended from 1932 to 1937. White farmers

received official assistance, however, and special aid was provided

for Boer emigrants from Angola after 1928. By 1935 white farmers

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1924-194°

possessed twice as much land as in 1913, and by 1937 the total

white population numbered 31,800, of whom two-thirds spoke

Afrikaans and one-third German. The long drought from 1930

to 1934 killed half the country's cattle, but meanwhile karakul

sheep had been introduced on white farms, and by 1937 the

revenue from the export of their pelts, worth over £im, exceeded

those of diamonds. By then, however, South West Africa had

become heavily indebted to the Union, which between 1926 and

1957 lent over £z.5m; nearly half of this was to meet deficits on

ordinary expenditure, and revenue exceeded £im only in 1937-8.

The African population — some 280,000 by 1937 — became

ever more dependent on working for wages, though on average

these were still lower than in the Union. In 1926 a monopoly was

created for recruiting labour in Ovamboland, and from 1935 this

distributed workers to white farmers as well as to the mines.

Migrancy rates were very high, except when mining virtually

ceased in the early 1930s. Pass-laws were applied to all males over

fourteen, and from 1928 chiefs might be deposed without right

of appeal; by 1937 all seven Ovambo chiefs had been thus

replaced. From 1923, reserves were demarcated, but they consti-

tuted a very inadequate subsistence base and they supported only

25,600 people (including

8,400

Herero). African taxes paid for

missionary schoolteachers and some small improvements in the

reserves, but in 1936 the total expenditure on Africans, including

their administration, was only £51,000, barely one-third of the

cost of white education. In the same year, a government-

appointed commission advised that 'more active steps be taken

by the Mandatory for the development of the Non-European

races...[as] enjoined by Article 22 of the Covenant...and that

financial appropriations be made for the purpose'. The Union

government replied that 'the knowledge that [Natives] must

depend on themselves [was] in itself a useful lesson'.

From time

to time South Africa's administration was queried and criticised

by the Permanent Mandates Commission, but they were powerless

to effect change, or even to make their own inspection of the

territory.

E. Hellmann (ed.), Handbook

on race

relations

in South

Africa (Cape Town, 1949),

752-3.

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The High Commission Territories

In Basutoland, African farming had benefited from high prices

for wool and grain during the First World War; thereafter, total

exports exceeded £\m only in 1928, and throughout the 1930s

were never worth half as much. Drought and depression forced

up the rate of labour migration: from 1929 to 1933 there was a

rapid increase in the proportion of Transvaal mineworkers from

Basutoland, and this proportion remained 13 per cent or more as

the mines continued to expand their labour force. In 1936 there

were in the Union 78,000 men and 2 3,000 women from Basutoland,

out of a total population of 662,000: at least half the adult male

population was absent. Similar trends could be observed among

the much smaller populations of Swaziland and Bechuanaland,

where in the late 1930s average absentee rates were about 40 and

30 per cent respectively. Swaziland's commodity exports, mainly

of tin and tobacco, were slight, yet by the 1930s the country

depended heavily on imports of food. In 1924 exports from

Bechuanaland, as also from the other protectorates, were obstruc-

ted by a Union regulation banning imports of light-weight cattle.

In the late 1930s, cattle exports from Bechuanaland increased, due

partly to the growth of the Northern Rhodesian Copperbelt, while

the gold boom stimulated mining at Tati. By 1940 the value of

commodity exports had risen to £446,000, but even so labour

migration was also on the increase.

The protectorates, then, remained economic appendages to

South Africa: indeed, from 1932 their workers on the Rand paid

tax in Johannesburg. Yet there were also belated signs that Britain

was developing a greater sense of responsibility for them. While

the Privy Council rejected, in 1926, a Swazi claim to land alienated

in 1907, successive British governments resisted the Union's wish

to incorporate the protectorates. Britain was not obliged to do

more on this issue than consult African opinion, but when Amery,

as Dominions and colonial secretary, visited the protectorates in

1927 he was left in no doubt of African opposition to incorpo-

ration, and this was intensified by South Africa's segregation laws

of 1936. Instead, administration was slowly adapted to resemble

more closely British colonial practice elsewhere in Africa. The

effect of the depression on already exiguous local revenues

occasioned investigations on behalf of the Dominions Office by

600

Sir Alan Pim. His reports on Swaziland (1932), Bechuanaland

(1933) and Basutoland (1935) exposed past British neglect and

criticised the extent to which chiefs had become the autocratic

henchmen of white administrator-magistrates, at the expense of

indigenous forums of consultation. Pim recommended that local

African authorities should be made more accountable, in line with

the implementation of indirect rule in other British territories. In

Bechuanaland

attempt

in 1934

to standardise judicial procedures

was strongly resisted by the senior chiefs of the Ngwato and

Ngwaketsi, but from 1938 chiefs were paid salaries out of'native

treasuries' instead of commissions on tax collected. In Basutoland,

similar reforms were also set in train in 1938; in Swaziland they

were deferred until the 1940s. There was a more immediate

response to Pirn's recommendations for economic assistance. In

one sense this was already

matter of routine: budget deficits were

made up by British grants-in-aid, which for Bechuanaland and

Swaziland were substantial in the 1930s. But the protectorates also

secured finance for capital expenditures from the Colonial

Development Fund. Between 1933 and 1941 Bechuanaland

received £181,000 in grants for water-development; from 1936 to

1940 Swaziland received £83,000, partly for dams to improve

grazing; while in 1936 Basutoland received an interest-free loan

of £160,000 to combat soil erosion. Such sums were scarcely

extravagant, but measured against annual budgets

they were

more generous than allocations from the Fund to other parts of

British colonial Africa.

Ordinary revenue

1935-6: Basutoland, £321,689; Bechuanaland, £132,513;

Swaziland, £102,752.

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CHAPTER

BRITISH CENTRAL AFRICA

the

beginning

the twentieth century

the

main engine

change

Central Africa was the British South Africa Company,

founded by Cecil Rhodes.

1889

had received from the British

government

charter to exercise powers of administration

the

region. During the next decade its agents invaded most parts

the mineralised tablelands between

the

middle Limpopo,

the

Zambezi-Congo watershed and Lake Tanganyika; the Company

thereby gained private possession of virtually all mineral deposits

throughout

the

sphere assigned

to it by

international treaties.

South

the Zambezi,

what from 1898 was called Southern

Rhodesia, gold and the temperate climate of the uplands attracted

white settlers,

who

seized much African land. North

of the

Zambezi,

the

Company's sphere consisted

by 1900 of two

territories: North-Western Rhodesia, with communications run-

ning south,

and

North-Eastern Rhodesia, with communications

running eastwards

the Shire valley. They were united

1911

to form Northern Rhodesia.

1905

the

western border

the

Company's northern sphere, hitherto disputed

Portugal, was

settled

arbitration.

Its

eastern border

was

formed

by the

highlands sloping down to Lake Nyasa

(Malawi).

These highlands,

and the country straddling the route to the lake up the Shire valley,

had been taken over

by the

Foreign Office

and

designated

the

British Central Africa Protectorate; this was transferred

to the

Colonial Office

1904

and

called Nyasaland from 1907.

The

territory contained dense clusters

population; there were

minerals

consequence

but

much land

had

been alienated

whites

in the

Shire highlands.

By 1901 its

white population

numbered 314,

against perhaps

million Africans;

North-

Eastern and North-Western Rhodesia there were about 600 whites

and possibly some 800,000 Africans;

Southern Rhodesia there

were also around 800,000 Africans but about 11,000 whites.

The

Rhodesias were linked

the outside world by

railway system

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