African Studies Institute - Seminar Papers

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'We are being punished because we are poor'. The Bus Boycotts of Evaton and Alexandra, 1955-1957
(1979-03) Lodge, Tom
This article concerns itself with two bus boycotts, one well known, the other less so. They are interesting in themselves, but here it is suggested that they are relevant towards an understanding of South African black resistance in general, and in particular in the context of the 1950s when African political organisations were attempting to mobilise large numbers of people in campaigns which had the ultimate aim of hastening the collapse of the existing political structure. A problem of that period , noted by many commentators both hostile and friendly to the liberation movement, is that despite the Congress Alliance's efforts to articulate its long-term aims through immediate issues: pass laws, wages, and so forth; despite the government's lack of concern to effectively legitimise its authority in the eyes of the masses; despite this being a period of economic stagnation relative to the preceding decade, so wages rose only very slowly and probably declined in real terms, nevertheless, mass response to African political organisation was uneven and often disappointing. Ben Turok, a former activist within the Congress movement, tells us that by the second half of the 1950s, after an initial promise at the beginning of the decade, support for the national movement was falling off in urban areas; that frustration and repression were beginning to promote political apathy (Turok 1973: 333). The boycotts will therefore be discussed within the general context of the problems of political mobilisation.
United Democratic Front: Leadership and ideology
(1987-08) Lodge, Tom
The UDF is essentially a federation linking a large and heterodox collection of organisations varying in function, size, and popular impact. It is strongest in the Eastern Cape, traditionally the stronghold of the ANC, with which many local UDF leaders are historically associated. Class and communal cleavages as well as the presence of rivals with a popular following, make the UDF comparatively weaker in Cape Town and Durban. In the industrial heartland of the Transvaal, the UDF is undoubtedly paramount, but the sheer size of the urban centres, their social complexity, and the uncertainties of the UDF' s relationship with a well-established trade union movement, make its own capacity for marshalling disciplined support questionable. In the Transvaal, to a greater extent than in its other four main regions, the UDF has come to depend upon a tacit alliance with an increasingly politicised yet politically independent trade union movement. Any analysis of the UDF, though, should not be limited to the bureaucratic boundaries of its often patchy organisation, for the UDF functions more in the fashion of a social movement than a deliberately contrived political machine. With this consideration in mind, two questions need examining. Which social constituencies does the UDF represent? Is it possible to perceive in the UDF's ideological discourse the interests or concerns of particular social classes?
The Poqo insurrection
(1986-02) Lodge, Tom
This paper is about one of the least successful of South Africa's revolutionary movements. Several thousand Poqo insurrectionists were arrested during the course of the 1960s. The vast majority of these were detained and convicted before they had had a chance to strike a single blow. Fewer than thirty deaths can be attributed to the activities of Poqo adherents of whom nearly the same number were sentenced to death in South African courts. The history of the Poqo uprisings is a history without a climax. Its final act takes place in the courtrooms not the barricades. Perhaps for this reason the Poqo story has lacked a chronicler. This paper is an attempt to compensate for the perfunctory treatment Poqo has received from historians. It provides a narrative of Poqo's development and a description of its social following. It then attempts to assess Poqo's historical significance.
Political organisation and community protest: The African National Congress in the Rand Townships, 1955-1957
(1978-03) Lodge, Tom
This paper will examine three instances of African protest: the attempts to resist the removals in the Johannesburg western areas, the opposition to Bantu Education and the Alexandra bus boycott of 1957. It was hoped that analyses of these movements would throw some light on the relationship of organised nationalist opposition to the less formal resistance that sprung from economic pressures rather than clearly perceived political aspirations. To have examined in detail protest in which the ANC was not obviously involved, might have provided: a more useful focus but unfortunately information on the kind of ‘informal’ protest described below is difficult to obtain from the more obvious sources which for reasons of time the research for this paper had to be limited. However an examination of the three campaigns does provide some insight into the relationship between the ANC and local interests and the extent to which it succeeded in channeling and expressing popular grievances. This may help to correct distortions which have resulted from a tendency to analyze African political opposition purely from the perspective of the nationalist movement, considering it in isolation from the general socio-economic context of black politics. The history of the ANC in the 1950s heeds to be written from a local level: how did branches operate, how were they viewed in the local community, what particular interests did they represent, was there anything socially distinct about their membership, how were the local communities structured?
The Paarl Insurrection
(1979-10) Lodge, Tom
At half past two, early in the morning of Thursday, November 22nd, 1962, 250 men carrying axes, pangas and various self-made weapons left the Mbekweni location and marched on Paarl. On the outskirts of the city the marchers formed two groups, one destined for the prison where the intention was to release prisoners, the other to make an attack on the police station. Before the marchers reached Paarl’s boundaries, the police had already been warned of their approach by a bus driver. Police patrols were sent out and one of these encountered the marchers in Paarl’s Main Street. Having lost the advantage of surprise, the marchers in Main Street began to throw stones at cars, shop windows and any police vans which they came across on their way to the police station. The police at the station were armed with sten guns and rifles in anticipation of the attack. At ten minutes past four between 75 and a hundred men advanced on the station throwing stones. When the attackers came within twenty-five yards of the station they were fired upon and two of them were immediately killed. The marchers then broke up into smaller groups and several were arrested or shot during their retreat. Some of the men who had taken part in the assault on Paarl police station met up in Loop Street with the group that was marching on the prison. These men regrouped and embarked on an attack on the inhabitants of Loop Street. Three houses and two people in the street were attacked: a seventeen year old girl and a young man were killed and four other people were wounded. According to police evidence, five insurgents were killed and fourteen were wounded. By five o clock, the Paarl uprising was over; police reinforcements had arrived from Cape Town and the men from Mbekweni were in full retreat. This paper has two purposes. One is to provide an analysis of the causes of the Paarl disturbance. In the literature on black South African opposition movements, the events in Paarl are scarcely mentioned. This is at least partly because the participants were not politically very sophisticated or articulate; they are consequently difficult to write about. But the neglect of the events in Paarl is also attributable to a bias in much of the relevant scholarship: the emphasis of historical studies has been on black ideological response and has tended to focus on the most fluent articulants of black aspirations. There is a tendancy for the history of black South African opposition to be intellectual history and to concern itself with the thoughts, responses and actions of an elite group.
The creation of a mass movement: Strikes and defiance, 1950-1952
(1981-08) Lodge, Tom
During the 1940's under the stimuli of industrial action, communal protest and passive resistance and an increasingly repressive social and political climate, the African National Congress's leadership had reached the point of embracing a strategy based on mass action : the strikes, boycotts and civil disobedience entailed in the Programme adopted in Bloemfontein in 1949. The form this programme would assume was indefinite : the Programme of Action was a statement of principle rather than a detailed strategem. But the months following the December conference allowed little time for careful planning. In 1950 the Government began its first major offensive against organized African opposition : the Suppression of Communism Act was directed not solely at the Communist Party and left-wing multiracial trade union groupings; it sanctioned the persecution of any individual group or doctrine intended to bring "about any political, industrial, social or economic change ... by the promotion of disturbance or disorder, by unlawful acts" or "encouragement of feelings of hostility between the European and non-European races of the Union.
Class conflict, communal struggle and patriotic unity: The Communist Party of South Africa during the Second World War
(1985-10-07) Lodge, Tom
The years of the Second World War witnessed a revival in the fortunes of the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA). At the beginning of the war the Party's following numbered less than 300, it s influence in the trade unions was negligible, it was isolated from other political organisations among blacks, while it s efforts with whites had succeeded neither in checking the growth of fascism or Afrikaner nationalism nor in building class unity. Six years later the Party could count it s adherents in thousands rather than hundreds, it was capable of winning white local government elections, and its members presided over the largest-ever African trade union movement as well as contributing significantly to the leadership of the African and Indian Congresses. From 1945 knowledge of the Party’s development becomes vital for any understanding of the mainstream of black politics in South Africa. This paper will examine and attempt to explain the wartime expansion in the Communist Party's influence, first by referring to the social and economic conditions as well as the overall political environment of the time, and then by discussing the Party's policies and strategies’ CPSA responses to three different sets of movements or organisations will be discussed: movements of the urban poor, of peasants, and of labour. The paper will conclude with an evaluation of the Party's role and development during the period.

African Studies Institute - Seminar Papers

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