Labour's role in the pact government was to detach the British working-class vote from Smuts and his imperialist South African party. Or so the Nationalists said, when explaining to their conservative followers on the platteland why it was necessary to enter into an alliance with a pack of English socialists. 'We are brothers, said Tielman Roos; 'the Labour Party is part of us.' Its growth was almost as important to the Nationalists as their own, he claimed, and urged every Labour sympathizer to join the party. Creswell's standing in the cabinet depended on his ability to win and retain the allegiance of white workers. To get their backing he pursued a vigorous white labour policy through a new labour department and the trade unions.1
Industrial relations had previously been handled by a subdivision of the mines and industries department. When Creswell started his department in July 1924, it consisted of himself and a secretary, C. W. Cousins, the race-conscious former director of census. A year later the staff had grown to 154, one of whom was Ivan Walker, who resigned the secretaryship of the typographical union to take the position of chief labour inspector. The department professed to watch over the social and economic welfare of the Coloured race', accepted responsibility only for 'races which subscribe to a civilized standard of life' and made its first aim the relief of unemployment among whites.
As in 1902-4, when he managed a mine on the Rand, Creswell maintained that the solution was to create employment for unskilled whites in rough manual work. He proposed to do this by insisting on a 'fair wage, clause in government and municipal contracts, which would have the effect of inducing contractors to prefer whites. Unemployed Coloured, it was argued, could find work on farms or take the place of Africans expelled from towns under the Natives (Urban Areas) Act. 2 At this early stage, then, were drawn the lines along which all governments would try to reconcile the demand for unskilled labour with the shibboleths of white supremacy.
To enlist the trade unions, Creswell called the leaders together in August 1924 to discuss unemployment and the formation of a new inter-provincial centre able to speak with authority for the whole of the country'. A committee was appointed to draft a constitution and to convene a conference, which met at Johannesburg in March 1925. Believing in both the stick and the carrot, Creswell put before the conference an Emergency Powers Bill which, it was claimed, would avoid a repetition of the ghastly blunders of 1913 and 1922'. 3 The bill provided for compulsory arbitration and prohibited sabotage, intimidation, and the employment during a dispute of scab' or African labour. The delegates viewed the measure with mixed feelings. There was no objection, said J. George, one of Creswell's loyal adherents, to arbitration or the removal of Africans during a widespread strike; but he objected to giving the minister dictatorial powers almost indistinguishable' from those exercised under martial law.4
The conference defeated by twenty-four votes to nine a resolution moved by Glass repudiating the bill, and decided that it should be referred to a parliamentary select committee. Dealing with the main item on the agenda, Creswell urged delegates to avoid splits that enabled employers to pursue the old divide-and-rule policy; and promised to accept a strong trade union congress as the official mouthpiece of the movement. Much depended on the person chosen to guide the destinies of the new organization. The hour has struck and we trust the right man will be chosen.' 5
To Creswell's dismay, the conference chose Bill Andrews in preference to George as the general secretary of the S.A. Association of Employees' Organizations, the title under which the new federation was launched. Equipped with a research and statistical division, it was designed by the right wing to make a clean break with the movement's militant past and become a respectable body, advising the government on labour relations and securing representation on public and international institutions. 6 Andrews's election spoilt this image, and gave the opposition a handle. Communists capture Trade Union Congress,' the daily press cried. It accused Andrews, Glass and others of pretending to leave the party in order to penetrate the unions for the furtherance of their pernicious schemes.
Miners, engine drivers, printers, bank officials, and municipal employees, among others, refused to join the Association. They were put off by the red-baiting, or objected to the non-racial constitution that admitted unions with Coloured and Indian members. This was a sensational departure from the Transvaal's tradition, a triumph for both the communists and the Cape's open door policy. To become truly national, the Association wished to merge with the Cape Federation of Labour Unions, which would not join a colour bar organization. Another reason for the Association's tolerance was the improved status of Coloured and Indian workers under the Industrial Conciliation Act. After twenty-five years of pressure by Abdurahman and the APO, they had obtained at least formal equality with whites in the system of collective bargaining. A practical basis for solidarity now existed, and Johannesburg's furniture workers recognized it by forming a union without a colour bar at a meeting convened in May 1925 by the SAAEO.
Andrews used his influence to promote inter-racial solidarity, but his main endeavour was to overcome the hostility of the unafliliated unions. The second annual conference held in April 1926 changed its name to the S.A. Trade Union Congress and altered the basis of representation so as to give the big unions a dominant voice in the organization. Andrews set out the benefits of affiliation in prosaic trade union terms. The TUCs influence, he argued, would increase in proportion to its representative character. Like any individual union, Congress is not a body distinct and above the workers but is the worker himself in his corporate capacity acting with his fellows for the common good '. 7
White trade unionism tolerated attacks on capitalism and not on colour bars. By taking the top executive post in the movement, Andrews became enmeshed in its white labour policies, though he never surrendered his socialist principles or reverted to his un-Marxist concepts of pre-war days. In 1907 he identified the state with the white workers, and argued that the African's vitality and low standards threatened not only their existence but the very State itself'. 8 In 1925, he sat on the Economic and Wage Commission and used the opportunity to lecture the public on the nature of the state. Quoting Frederick Engels, he defined it as an organ of class domination, the organ of oppression of one class by another'; and the product of society at a certain stage of its development'. State and society were not synonymous terms. When threatened in the slightest degree, the dominant class used the state's coercive apparatus to defend its interests. South Africa cannot even pretend to be a democratic State, but is frankly an oligarchy allowing only a small minority of its adult males to have a voice in the selection of their rulers.'9
'The one thing that the present Government is ruthlessly and savagely opposed to,' wrote Andrews in 1926, is any attempt by the native worker to assert himself as a man and a citizen.' Drastic laws prevented Africans from encroaching on the white man's preserves. The Labour party supported the policy because it depended wholly on the Nationalists for its share of ministerial portfolios and for many of its seats in parliament. White trade unions gave their backing because they saw no other way of protecting themselves from the ever-advancing African, whose cheapness endeared him to the employing class. Moreover, many trade union leaders, having adopted the class collaboration theory, denied that the interests of employers and employed were essentially antagonistic. These leaders attributed industrial friction to misunderstandings on both sides, and claimed that these could readily be removed by round-table conferences or by using the elaborate system of arbitration courts, wage boards and industrial councils. 10
The labour movement, predicted Andrews, would never become a dominant factor in public affairs unless it opened its ranks, both political and industrial, to the great mass of workers. He did not, however, repeat the familiar radical contention that capitalism would inevitably break down the white worker's defences and force him to shed his racial prejudices. For it was evident that the unions had achieved the formal recognition under industrial laws for which they had struggled since the turn of the century. Favoured by an economic boom and the labour department's active policy of promoting industrial 'home-rule' under 'cooperative control, 11 the unions were recovering from the decline that had set in after 1922.
The Industrial Conciliation Act imposed on both employees, and employers' organizations a duty to register within three months of their formation. 12 Registration conferred corporate status, enabled a union to sue or be sued collectively, protected it and its members from claims for damages resulting from lawful action taken during a dispute, and enabled it to take part in statutory conciliation procedures. These were substantial incentives, and met with a ready response. The number of registered unions rose from 46 in 1924 to 113 in 1930, and their membership from 38,800 to 75,500. An additional 33 unregistered unions, with a combined membership of 43,000, were recorded in 1930. Workers of all racial groups felt the stimulus, and its effects were particularly noticeable on Indians and Coloured. 13
The act encouraged the formation of permanent industrial councils, of which there were forty-three on 30 June 1931. A majority were registered for a particular province or district, and represented the skilled trades, like printing, engineering, building, motor works, tailoring, cabinet-making, hairdressing, clothing and baking. Only registered unions and employers, organizations could constitute a council. It consisted in equal numbers of representatives of both sides and a chairman appointed from among them or from outside the council. They had the power to specify minimum wage rates and other conditions of employment by agreement which, if published with ministerial approval, became binding on all employers and employees in the industry and area affected. Underpayment of wages or any other breach of an agreement might expose both parties to the risk of a fine or imprisonment. The councils relied mainly on a corps of salaried industrial agents, to inspect employers' premises and records, detect evasions and report delinquents.
Industrial councils were charged with the duty of settling disputes and preventing strikes. No strike or lockout was lawful in a field covered by an agreement while it remained in force, or until the council had considered the issue. If negotiations broke down, a majority of the council members could refer the dispute to an arbitrator, whose award was binding on the parties. In the absence of a council, the minister, at the request of a representative number of employees or employers, could appoint a conciliation board, which in effect was an ad hoc industrial council. A strike or lockout was illegal unless the minister refused to appoint a board, or unless one was appointed and failed to agree, or, if an agreement had been reached, unless it expired. Small unions, unorganized groups of workers and those employed in essential services, where strikes were prohibited, tended to use the conciliation board procedure; and it was resorted to also on the mines in preference to an industrial council. Of the 89 conciliation boards appointed in 1924-35, 32 were in municipal services, 28 in mining, and 11 in manufacturing. 14
Left-wing critics complained that the unions were losing their independence and spirit of militancy. Collective bargaining, compulsory negotiation procedures, and the statutory ban on strikes in essential services were said to stifle or retard the growth of class consciousness. Even the industrial registrar deplored the workers, regrettable apathy', which he attributed to a feeling that members of registered unions were secure and unassailable', and could safely allow government agencies to negotiate on their behalf. 15 Indicative of the new mood, and also of the economic boom, the number of strikes declined sharply from a total of 205, involving 175,664 workmen, in 1916-22, to 44, involving 16,540, in 1923-9. The critics said that militant and well-organized unions would gain more by direct action than by conciliation. On the available evidence, however, it seemed that the privileged section, which included the upper stratum of Coloured and Indian employees, preferred negotiated settlements, if necessary at the expense of African co-workers or the general body of consumers.
Leaders of a new type took the place of the rugged, class-conscious radicals who had built the first unions. Between four and five hundred trade unionists sat on industrial councils, conciliation boards, apprenticeship committees or other public bodies; attended conferences in Johannesburg, Durban, Port Elizabeth and Cape Town; and formed part of a large bureaucracy. Some officials administered large establishments, were well paid, associated with employers' and government representatives in offices and hotels, and often depended on employers to collect membership dues under stop orders. The bureaucrats kept a firm grip on the union by manipulating constitutions and meetings, induced employers to enforce closed shop agreements, and threatened militant members or potential rivals with expulsion from the union and eventual dismissal from the trade.
The pattern was set by the printing and newspaper industry one of the first to enforce an industrial council agreement. It charged the employers with a duty of ' maintaining the discipline of the S.A. Typographical Union, provided for a joint board to sit in judgement on defaulting union members, and gave those expelled a right of appeal to the industrial council. 16 Though employers seldom acted quite so blatantly as custodians of trade union solidarity, the closed shop agreements, which denied employment in the trade to non-union workers other than Africans, applied in the Transvaal clothing, baking and tailoring trades, as well as in the printing industry. Trade union officials were given special facilities under some agreements, as in the clothing industry, to organize the workers and collect subscriptions; or employers undertook, as in biscuit factories, hotels and bakeries, to collect the union dues under a stop order agreement.
Common interests multiplied across the table in boardrooms of industrial councils. Both sides could collaborate in underselling a rival producer in another province, or protect themselves against competition from underpaying employers and undercutting workers, or enter into agreements at the expense of consumers or the lower paid worker. Africans who shared fringe benefits such as a shorter working week or paid public holidays lost more than they gained because undercutting, their chief bargaining weapon, was made illegal.
There were compensating advantages for Coloured and Indians. As employees under the Industrial Conciliation Act, they could belong to registered unions and be represented on the councils. Those who gained admission to the skilled trades also benefited from the principle of the rate for the job. The effect was to stimulate a moderate growth of non-racial' unions, largely in the Cape and Natal. Yet what seemed at the time to foreshadow a breaking down of racial barriers turned out to be a major setback for the national liberation movement. The relatively large and important group of Coloured artisans, and to a lesser extent that of the Indian, were drawn away from the struggle against colour bars into the orbit of the white labour aristocracy. As this process matured, the vision of unity between Coloured and African workingmen, to which Abdurahman had steadfastly adhered in earlier years, receded.
Drafting errors in the Industrial Conciliation Act left loopholes through which African women generally and many African men in the Cape and Free State fell within the definition of employee. 17' Except in Cape Town, few of those qualified to do so formed or joined registered unions. Excluded from the statutory bargaining procedures, the great majority were at the mercy of employers and trade unions. Some employers took advantage of the legal confusion to dismiss employees and substitute pass-bearing' Africans at lower rates of pay. 18 Some industrial councils made concessions to the best paid employees at the expense of the poorest and least organized, or introduced colour bars, as when the council for the Transvaal clothing industry stipulated in 1925 that no Africans were to be employed in machining, cutting or tailoring. 19
Racial discrimination depressed the African's standards and forced him to undercut. The unions approved of the discrimination and objected strenuously to the undercutting. The new Industrial Conciliation Act of 1936 authorized the minister to apply the terms of a wage-fixing instrument to workers other than employees. 20 More Africans were eventually brought within the scope of wage agreements than all other racial groups combined. A few, who worked at the same jobs as whites, benefited; the rest usually lost out, either because the union deliberately sacrificed them to obtain concessions for its members, or because employers refused to bargain and stipulated their own rates for occupations in which Africans were employed. 21
Smuts's Industrial Conciliation Act had the effect of extending the pattern of labour organization on the mines to manufacturing industries. Artisans, like miners, obtained a permanent stake in the white power structure, while employers offset the cost of sheltered employment by paying Africans less than a living wage. The system tended to perpetuate the wide gap between skilled and unskilled wages that had developed in the colonial economy, and therefore prejudiced unskilled workers of all races. Given the ability to keep the voteless African and Indian in subjection, the ruling class could ignore their resentment. Unskilled whites, in contrast were voters and a potential threat to white solidarity, since they might discover a common interest with Africans despite differences of status, race and culture. The poor white was for these reasons as much a political as a social problem. Governments attempted to solve it by absorbing the unskilled white worker in the privileged sector of the economy.
South Africa's dependence on domestic sources of skilled workers had become acute during the war, when immigration virtually ceased. Juvenile advisory boards were formed from 1915 onwards to encourage the systematic training of white youngsters in the industrial arts. The boards were given statutory recognition and wider powers by the Juvenile Act of 1921 and the Apprenticeship Act of 1922, with the primary aim of enabling young whites to acquire skills and hold their own in competition with low-paid adult workers. 22 Apprenticeship committees, consisting of equal numbers of employees and employers, determined the conditions of apprenticeship in particular trades, and authorized approved employers to apprentice youngsters with prescribed educational and age qualifications.
The printers, engineers, builders and railwaymen had established apprenticeship committees by the end of 1924. They consisted of whites only, and adopted white labour policies. Africans, Coloured and Indians were excluded by racially biased employers and trade unionists, the qualifications laid down for apprenticeship, and the inadequacy of facilities for technical education. The system also put obstacles in the way of many white youngsters, especially those with a rural background, who had neither the required standard of education for apprenticeship, nor the necessary amount of influence with employers and trade unionists. Moreover, as Creswell pointed out: All South African Europeans were not fit to be supervisors.' A large number were fit only for manual work'. 23
Neither the Apprenticeship nor the Industrial Conciliation Acts contained an explicit colour bar. Men and women of any race could be employed on any class of work, provided that they were paid at the rates laid down by industrial councils and conciliation boards. Since underpayment was illegal, employers had no incentive to employ Africans on skilled work for which whites or Coloured were available. The market was wide open to inter-racial competition only for less skilled work. To give whites a measure of protection in this field, Creswell proposed to introduce minimum wage standards under the Wage Act of 1925.
Its forerunner, the Regulation of Wages, Apprentices and Improvers Act of 1918, applied to women and juveniles in specified industries, notably the sweated' trades, such as catering, tobacco, sweet and box-making. Local trade boards were appointed to fix minimum wages and regulate working conditions, with a view to keeping white women off the streets and encouraging white youths to serve an apprenticeship. Parliament decided against wage differentiation on racial grounds, however, since it might prejudice the employment of whites or lead to an increase of production costs. 24
Similar problems arose in the administration of the Wage Act. It provided for the appointment of a single national board, able to recommend minimum wages and conditions for all or any groups of workers in an industry or range of occupations. The board could at first differentiate according to sex, age or race, and was limited in principle to recommending not less than a wage suitable to civilized habits of life. 25 If it was found that employers could not afford to pay a civilized' wage, the board needed special ministerial authority to recommend a lower rate. This was the most interesting and certainly most South African provision in the whole Act', remarked one observer 26 and the clause disclosed the primary aim of pricing Africans, Indians and Coloured out of occupations considered suitable for whites.
The act, said Creswell in the House, would open up greater areas of industry for every man demanding the civilized standards of Europeans'. Boydell, the minister for posts and telegraphs, was more explicit. Nowhere was the bill more necessary, he claimed, than in Natal, where whites were being ousted from one trade after another by the unfair competition' of Indians who were efficient and cheap. Employers would be forced to pay them the same wages as whites. 27 This was the intention; but the wage board soon discovered that higher wage rates might put employers as well as African or Asian workers out of business. In all investigations relating to 'unskilled labourers, the board invariably reported that it could not recommend a civilized wage. 28 In effect, unskilled whites could not be fitted into the wide gap between conventional white and African rates of pay.
Wage determinations tended to maintain the gap, though Lucas, chairman of the board from 1926 to 1935, undertook to 'raise the lowest so that they conform to the highest and best standard of civilization'. The board, he claimed, was concerned only with the value of the job', and had neither the will nor the means to substitute white for coloured employees. 29 However, the board could not in practice ignore the racial factor, for this, rather than skill or merit, determined the spread of wages. The value of the job was made the touchstone only when it benefited whites. 30 Industrial councils and wage boards disregarded progress by individual Africans in terms of education, skill or experience, and polarized wages in manufacturing industries. Wages in the higher range fluctuated round £5 or £6 a week, and the labourer's wage between £1 1s. and £1 5s. The ratio of five or four to one persisted with few significant variations for the next thirty years. In 1956 whites employed in private manufacturing received an average income in salaries and wages of £67 10s. a month, and Africans an average of £12 10s.
Unskilled whites might be fifteen per cent more productive than the African, as the Railways claimed on insufficient evidence; yet they were paid at least twice as much, and their employment sent labour costs up by twenty per cent. 31 As industrialists were no more willing than mine owners to sacrifice profits in order to rescue whites from poverty, it was left to government to find jobs for them at the taxpayers, expense. Hertzog's circular letter of 31 October 1924 instructed all departments to substitute ' civilized' for uncivilized' labour where practicable. 32 An uncivilized person was one whose aim is restricted to the bare requirements of the necessities of life as understood among barbarous and undeveloped peoples', recorded the circular, while civilized meant a standard of living generally recognized as tolerable from the usual European standpoint'. The public works department considered that a wage of 8s. a day was enough to elevate a kafir job' to the level of civilized labour.
Though carefully worded to avoid criticism at the ILO in Geneva, the definitions were generally understood to-distinguish all whites from all other persons. An APO deputation told C. W. Malan, the minister of railways, in April 1926 that Coloured dockers for whom work had been found by dismissing Africans should receive a civilized wage. He replied that the Coloured, being less civilized than whites, could not expect equal pay. 33 Ten years later, when a member of the Cape Coloured Commission, Abdurahman again argued that the aim of the civilized labour policy was to give whites preference over Africans, and not to drive the Coloured out of their jobs. 34 Government officials were less discerning and sacrificed Coloured, Indian and African employees to find jobs for 1,400 whites in 1925-6 at an extra cost of £162,000. The policy flourished most on the railways, in spite of their statutory duty to operate on business lines, and was extended also to provincial and municipal councils, while employers in the private sector were lured into collaboration with the bait of government contracts and protective tariffs. 35
An upward swing in the economy between 1925 and 1930 did more than all the subsidized labour schemes to provide work for unskilled whites; yet they learned to look for jobs and security to government and the white supremacy parties. Labour leaders claimed the credit for the fall in unemployment, and urged more vigorous action to prevent Asiatics, Coloured and Africans from competing against wage earners who formed ninety per cent of the electorate in Transvaal urban constituencies.36 Conciliation Boards, Economic Commissions, Wage Boards,' said W. D. Dey, chairman of the central areas branch of the miners' union, were the same tripe as Jan Smuts used to dish up by the pound, the only difference being the present crowd are slinging it out by the yard. He persuaded his members at Jeppe to form an opposition union under the name of the Transvaal White Miners' Association, and urged them to redress the wrongs of 1913, 1914 and 1922. 37 A deputation from the SAMWU and SAAEO asked the Chamber of Mines to set a maximum ratio of four Africans to one white on all new mines and to limit the employment of foreign Africans to mines earning less than six per cent on issued capital. 38
The Chamber wanted 'a black South Africa', warned Forward, and the pact government stood in the way. 39 To fulfil its electoral pledges, said Hertzog, the government introduced a bill in 1925 to restore the colour bar on the mines, and appointed a commission to provide the justification. It reported that ' throughout the mines natives are being set to do work that for its efficient carrying out requires on the part of its performers a regard for safety, a sense of responsibility and a capacity to exercise control over others, with which not even the most exceptional among their numbers are endowed'. 40 The statement was patently absurd, and belied by thirty years of mining experience. Health, safety and competence were irrelevant, however, to the main aim of placating white miners and teaching the owners to keep their profit-making within the confines of white supremacy. Self-preservation was the first law of nature, said Beyers, the minister of mines; we must deal with the preservation of the white race'. 41
Smuts opposed the bill with evident discomfort. Having issued the original colour bar regulations of 1912 without a mandate from parliament, he could not consistently object to their being legalized. There was a basic difference, he argued. His regulations, to which he had consented with great reluctance, merely confirmed long-standing practice in the Transvaal and OFS, whereas the bill would extend racial discrimination to regions and communities where it was unknown. He pleaded for honest, plain dealing and justice between man and man' as the proper basis of racial relations; and drew the inevitable retort that he opposed the bill only to please mine owners intent on substituting cheap labour for dear. 42
Protests came from the owners, the ICU, the APO, and the Transkeian general council, which asked to be heard at the bar of the House and, when this was refused, preferred not to waste its time by appearing before a select committee that had already adopted the bill in principle. Trade unions with Coloured members - among them the engineers, woodworkers, printers, builders, railwaymen, and members of the Cape federation - objected that the bill was too blatantly discriminatory. Less drastic methods, they argued, should be used to protect white standards against the effects of cheap labour. The mining unions and those with a colour bar constitution enthusiastically supported the bill, and reiterated their demand for a maximum ratio of four Africans to one white worker. 43
Beyers declared that he had never been unsympathetic to Africans and would deal with them as his children. Hertzog agreed to spare their feelings by discriminating against them in substance and not in name. 44 This was done by authorizing the executive to limit the issue of certificates of competence to whites and South Africa-born Coloured. The assembly passed the bill, while the senate, where Smuts had a majority, threw it out, in total disregard', mourned Forward, for the future European civilization of South Africa. 45 Both houses passed the 'colour bar act, as it was generally known, in 1926, thereby validating for the first time a racial discrimination that had operated on the mines since 1903. The effect of the regulations was to prohibit the employment, in either the Transvaal or the Orange Free State, of Africans and Asians in occupations for which a certificate was prescribed. These included the positions of mine manager, overseer, surveyor, engineer, assayer, blaster, driver of a winding engine, boiler attendant and larnpman. 46
The Mines and Works (Amendment) Act of 1926 differed in one notable respect from the 1912 regulations. It bracketed Coloured with whites in a position of privilege. For, explained Hertzog at Smithfield, OFS, in November 1925, there was no question of segregating the Coloured, who spoke the Afrikaner's language, shared his outlook and stood closer to him than to Africans. 47 Strategic as well as sentimental reasons dictated a policy of identity with the Coloured community in economic and political life. It would be very foolish, Hertzog told parliament in 1929, to drive the Coloured people to the enemies of the Europeans - and that will happen if we repel him - to allow him eventually to come to rest in the arms of the native. 48
Speaking at Smithfield; Hertzog outlined a comprehensive segregation programme, which he later incorporated in four bills. 49 One proposed to enfranchise Coloured men in all provinces and gradually integrate them in the white political structure. The other bills would isolate Africans behind territorial and political barriers. It was necessary, said Hertzog, to redeem the pledge given in 1913 that more land would be added to the reserves. This would enable Africans to live in splendid isolation, conduct their affairs under local rural councils, and emerge only to work for whites. The Cape African franchise would disappear, that being the main purpose of the project. Instead, chiefs and handpicked notables would elect seven white men to represent them in the assembly, as well as a general native council' with power to legislate for Africans only on matters specified by parliament.
A great debate followed. Afrikaner nationalists, Labour men and some liberals sang Hertzog's praises. He was an honest upright South African' who relied on Christian principles of equity and the expert advice of authorities on the native problem', eulogized Professor Edgar Brookes, one of the experts. Hertzogism, he maintained, would ensure that White civilization gets a fair chance to develop itself without iniquitous interference on every occasion when it takes a step forward'. 50 In less elegant language, though with an equally sinister allusion to the anti-civilization' forces at work, Forward approved of any measures that would reduce the weight of the African and Coloured vote in the Cape, where all parties had to play up' to it in order to win seats. It is for this reason that even leading society ladies of Cape Town on polling day wear the most bewitching smiles to persuade the native and coloured voters to vote for the master''.' 51
Coloured and Africans refused with impressive unanimity to sacrifice the Cape franchise in return for concessions to either section of the population. 'We do not want to sell the Natives' rights,' assured Abdurahman, 'or to be bribed by the Government to leave the Native in the lurch.' 52 James Ngojo, president of the Cape ANC. warned that Hertzog wanted to divide the people in order to rule. His aim was 'first to disfranchise the native and after that the coloured man'. 53 Africans, said Kadalie, did not begrudge the giving of rights to the Coloured, and strongly resented the gross injustice of differentiating between them and a full-blooded race. Hertzog's policy would set the whole African population ablaze, and was 'the biggest political crime since the days of absolute monarchy. 54
SEGREGATION OPPOSED BY AFRICAN PROLETARIAT, reported the Workers' Herald: and it quoted H. D. Tyamzashe, the ICU's Transvaal provincial secretary; A. M. Jabavu, its senior vice-president and editor of Imvo; and R. V. Selope Thema, a former general secretary of the ANC. They agreed that segregation would be justifiable only if complete and coupled with the right of self-determination. In demanding territorial separation, whites had forfeited their right to direct the African's destinies. Let him therefore have his own state and parliament, ' which would not be under the control of the Union Government, but should form part of the British Commonwealth of Nations'. 55
The ANC called on 'Kings, Chiefs and leaders' to defend the people's rights, and summoned a national convention, which met at Bloemfontein on 1 January 1926: the biggest and most representative gathering yet, some said, with delegates from as far afield as South West Africa and Rhodesia. They expressed a keen sense of national pride; refused to kowtow, as Mahabane would have them do by congratulating Hertzog on his 'courage', and applauded James Gumede when he chided them for speaking in the white man's tongue. 'We have been conquered,' he told them, but I do not admit that we are slaves. Men spoke of a native problem', said Kadalie, whereas their problems came from white arrogance, robbery and greed. After sitting all day and night, congress reaffirmed its bill of rights'; rejected segregation in any form; agreed to boycott native conferences' called by government under the Native Affairs Act; and decided to campaign for the removal of the colour bar from the constitution.56
In December, at the height of the campaign, the ICUs national council banned communists from official positions and dismissed La Guma, Gomas and Khaile. This action, predicted the party's annual conference on 1 January, would split the ICU and betray the people into the government's hands. The rank-and file should demand the unconditional reinstatement of the dismissed officials, purge the ICU of its corrupt and bureaucratic elements, and demand an immediate campaign against the enslaving pass laws and Hertzog bills. Bunting told the delegates, among whom were Africans, Indians and Coloured, that no government had done more than the Nationalist-Labour pact to incite racial hatred. The conference denounced the bills as 'an aggravated measure of colonial oppression' which would 'enslave, impoverish and proletarianize' Africans, and consequently undermine the standards of the white workers also'. It called on all African organizations to promote a general strike in protest, which white labour organizations, if only in their own interests, should support'. 57
The ICUs annual conference at Durban in April proposed a national day of prayer, and met with no greater response than the call for a general strike. 58 Unable to discover effective methods of struggle, the liberation movement confined its protests to meetings and resolutions. The ANC called chiefs and councillors together at Bloemfontein in April. They too rejected the bills and demanded a constitution without colour bars, full civic rights for all races, and unfettered freedom to buy land. 59 The climax of the campaign was the first Non-European Convention' to be held. It met at Kimberley in June, and was attended by more than a hundred delegates representing the ANC, APO, Indian Congress, Native Voters' Association, the Bantu Union, religious and welfare societies from all parts of southern Africa. They elected Abdurahman to the chair and resolved to take steps to combat any policy of differentiation on the grounds of colour or race'. The conference condemned Hertzog's bills, the colour bar act, the civilized labour policy and the native administration bill. On a motion by Sol Plaatje and I. J. Joshua, the APO delegate from Kimberley, it was agreed that the interests of South Africa as a whole can best be served by closer cooperation among the Non-European sections of South Africa and also between the non-Europeans and the Europeans'. 60
Unity was as hard to achieve, however, as militant action. There were too many warring groups and sectional interests among the dispossessed. Indian delegates at the convention did not speak, for fear that their participation might mar the prospect of persuading the government to modify its anti-Asian bills. A group of Coloured in the Cape revived the Afrikaner National Bond and boycotted the convention because, they said, Coloured rights, standards of living, economic status and political aspirations were very different from the African's. The Bond placed implicit trust in Hertzog's honesty and assurance that the Coloured stood next to the whites. 61 Even the chiefs, at one time a pillar of the ANC, were being detached from the liberation movement by the government's promises of official recognition, as well as by sanctions contained in a severe disciplinary code introduced under the Native Administration Act of 1927.
This act was a major instrument of Hertzog's segregation scheme. Apart from creating a separate system of courts to administer African law, it extended to other provinces Natal's repressive techniques of colonial rule and turned chiefs into petty officials of the native affairs department. 62 Hertzog and Smuts agreed that it had been a great mistake and evil on the part of previous administrations to neglect tribal law, undermine the authority of chiefs, and deprive them of the power to restrain their young men. 63 This recantation marked a significant change of attitude. In the nineteenth century white settlers had feared tribal institutions and regarded them as an obstacle to economic development. Now tribalism was to be reinvigorated; made into a bulwark against radical leaders and the thrust of African nationalism.
African leaders protested that they had outgrown tribalism. 'I am a civilized man,' said Professor Jabavu, and he refused to be ruled by a chief. A. W. G. Champion, the ICU secretary in Natal, predicted that tribalism and rule by chiefs would soon be things of the past. The government should recognize the inevitable and make the best of the Africans' new civilization. Parliament ignored the objections, and welcomed the bill with a degree of enthusiasm that Hertzog found almost embarrassing. The enthusiasm centred mainly round section 29, which created the crime of 'acting with intent to promote any feeling of hostility between Natives and Europeans'. This stirred both sides of the House. They denounced bolshevism, socialism and militant trade unionism; demanded repressive action against Andrews, Glass, Kadalie and Keable Mote; and urged the minister to provide for the deportation of persons convicted under the section.
The bill's most objectionable feature, said Andrews in June 1927, was the clause allowing the police to search private premises without a warrant. As for the hostility clause, it had no bearing on him or those who shared his politics. All they did was to argue that workers of every race had the same interests and should receive the same rates of pay. 64 The police soon showed that they equated the class struggle with racial conflict. To demand equality, or to protest against discrimination, was tantamount in their opinion to creating hostility against the master race. The Native Administration Act was gazetted in September 1927. Four communist and five ICU leaders were charged under the hostility section during the next six months. The first victims were three communist officials of the ANC branch in Cape Town - Stanley Silwana, John Gomas, and Bransby Ndobe - who spent three months in jail for having protested against the shooting of an African by a white policeman at Paarl. A. Brown, another Cape Town party member, was fined £25 for suggesting, during the flag controversy, that King George, General Smuts and General Hertzog might as well be put six feet underground for all the good they did to the people, which statement, the Supreme Court ruled, was less than incitement to hostility within the meaning of the act. 65
Kadalie returned from a tour of western Europe soon after the promulgation of the act. It was being used, he complained, to ban ICU meetings and to prevent the organization's officials from moving about the countryside. The real motive of the Act is clearly the suppression of the growing movement among the natives to secure a living wage.' The consequences might be disastrous to all. None knows better than we do how fatal is the narrow spirit of nationalism.' But who could blame the African for hating his oppressor? Denied all legitimate expression for his hopes and fears, maddened and humiliated by injustice, he would come to believe that the attainment of his liberty was synonymous with the crushing of white civilization. 66
Smuts's party, conforming to the Box and Cox tradition in racial politics, took on the role of reactionary extremism. Opposition members harassed the government with Iurid accounts of ICU agents inciting farm hands to demand a minimum of 8s. a day, and accused Madeley, the minister for posts and telegraphs, of setting the veld alight by declaring in public that no African could live decently on less. Africans everywhere, and particularly in Natal and the OFS, believed that the government approved of this opinion, complained Major Richards; while J. S. Marwick alleged that both Madeley and Boydell 'were definitely in favour of native trade unions and of revolutionary increases in the prevailing scale of native wages. Quoting from the Workers' Herald, Sir Thomas Watt supposed that Africans wanted 'to pull down their white masters, and he complained that all this was going on without any intervention by the government.67
Madeley's incautious statement was symptomatic of a conflict in the Labour party that affected its relations with the Nationalists. The partners had much in common, besides their ruthless determination to suppress Africans and Asians. Labour's socialist background was less objectionable to Afrikaners than the capitalist press liked to believe. They expected government to provide farmers with land and labour, assist them when crops failed, and protect them against Africans and aliens. Since his capital went into land, and not into mines and factories, the Afrikaner had no material reason to resent the growth of state enterprise. The more it spread, the greater was the opportunity for a bureaucracy to manipulate labour and trade in his interests. Labour claimed that the state steel works at Pretoria and the state diamond diggings at Alexander Bay were products of a revolutionary and even socialist policy'. 68 Such projects appealed no less to Afrikaner nationalists, and might easily have been initiated by them without Labour's assistance.
Both parties claimed the credit for state socialism and white racialism, but it was the Nationalists who made the bigger impact on the electorate. The Labour party recognised this, and found an additional reason for resentment in the Nationalists, ethnocentric strivings for Afrikaner unity. When achieved, this would reduce the British to a secondary role in the political hierarchy, and free the Nationalists of their dependence on Labour in parliament. A group of Labour dissidents took exception in 1925 to Hertzog's policy of sheltering infant industries behind tariff walls which, they said, would injure Britain's export trade. 69 Madeley, who led the attack, was rewarded with a seat in the cabinet where, it was hoped, his radical bent would be straightened out in administering posts and telegraphs. Barlow then complained that the promotion should have come to him, and other place-seekers in the party's national executive threatened at the annual conference in January 1926 to dissolve the pact unless the Nationalists conceded parity of posts in the cabinet. 70
The year that has passed has been one of the most trying in the history of the SALP,' said Briggs in his presidential address at the next annual conference. 71 Times yet more trying lay ahead. Party loyalties were severely strained in the bitter controversy over the flag, which ended with the enactment of the Union Nationality and Flag Act of 1927. Party branches accused Creswell of having sacrificed principles in order to maintain the pact, and the national council fell foul of the parliamentary caucus. 72 The dissension started a new round of self-criticism, and a re-examination of the party's racial policies. There was no unity in the movement, wrote Haynes; the white trade unions had lost their militancy since the pact, and were mere societies for raising poor salaries for harassed officials. 73 Ever since Wybergh and Sampson had drafted the ridiculous 'segregation' policy, the party had failed to give a lead on the burning question' of race and colour, complained J. W. Jarvis. He blamed its troubles on the petit-bourgeois psychology of the white worker, who was being bribed and kept contented out of the big margin of profits extracted from the labour of the African and Coloured.
The quarrel came to a head at the annual conference in 1928. Creswell refused to sit on the national council or accept its dictates in parliament. He and nine other members of the caucus broke away, held their own conference in Bloemfontein, set up an 'emergency executive', and claimed the legitimacy of succession. The national council declared that it was defending democratic control against caucus dictatorship and expelled the ten parliamentarians with a number of their leading supporters. 75 Madeley led the national council's eight adherents in parliament, the party's branches were divided between the two factions, and members resigned or fought one another with words and fists at branch or public meetings. The quarrel put an end to negotiations, then at an advanced stage, for direct trade union representation on the council. The crisis only holds the movement up to ridicule', wrote Stuart of the Cape Federation. It would be unwise for the unions to 'butt in' while the party was 'in a state of chaos. 76 Labour had forfeited its last opportunity to secure the formal allegiance of the trade union movement.
The split, said the communists, was over ministerial jobs and resulted from the opportunism of Labour leaders who collaborated with capitalists against the African. 77 Old radicals made their contribution to the diagnosis. Dunbar, writing under the pen-name Cincinnatus, claimed that the Labour party was being forced to choose between the socialist objective and white labour policies. ' It assumed the role of the superior and governing race towards the dumb millions of the exploited natives,' threw them into the arms of the capitalist party, and made Afrikaner workers feel that a vote for the Nationalists was a vote for Labour. A genuine socialist party would attract both groups. If Labour feared to adopt this policy, it was bound to disappear, and a true workers' party would take its place. 78 James Trembath blamed their troubles on the virtual abandonment of their socialist objective. The remedy, he urged, was to discontinue the pact and persuade the unions to become once again an integral part of the SALP. 79
The party, unrepentant, ignored the advice and clung to its old habits. To further alleviate unemployment,' resolved the Transvaal division's annual conference in October 1928, the S.A. Railways or any government or municipal undertakings be approached to replace the kaffir drivers of vehicles by unskilled white men. , When told that the Supreme Court had disallowed an ordinance prohibiting African and Asian drivers from transporting persons not of their own race, the delegates decided to ask the government to enforce the substitution by act of parliament.80 Colour prejudice was a two-edged weapon, however, as the national council discovered in November, shortly before a by-election in Turffontein. Madeley was forced out of the cabinet on the 3rd, ostensibly for having met Kadalie and other ICU members in defiance of Hertzog's wishes. Labour's candidate, D. E. Becker, was beaten because, complained Forward, Creswell appealed to colour prejudice, 'that last resort of a scoundrel' with the slogan 'Madeley and Kadalie'. 81
Madeley's followers claimed that he had fallen in defence of collective bargaining by valiantly attempting to open that safety valve, the ICU, 'at present the only medium through which natives can present their grievances'. 82 Yet it was difficult to detect significant differences, other than of temperament, between the rival leaders. Creswell was a martinet, resentful of criticism, aloof and frigid at party conferences. His hauteur repelled the rank-and-file, much as they admired his passionate desire to raise the unskilled white to a standard where he could compete ' with the increasing pressure of the black hordes who are threatening his very existence'. 83 Madeley, who claimed to be of working-class stock and class conscious, would sit down to lunch with the white driver of a government car, whereas Creswell found such equality distasteful. Yet both men found it possible to cooperate with a capitalist party in a policy of ruthless racial discrimination. Though choosing to break from the pact on the issue of the ICU, Madeley was as much a racist as Creswell.*
They both sacrificed party to personal ambition and refused to heal a breach that they knew would ruin their prospects in the coming general election. The national council's conference in January 1929 gloried in its complete freedom from all political alliances', yet humbly declared its willingness to bargain for seats with the Nationalists. 84 The Nationalists rejected the offer and renewed the alliance with Creswell's group, which contested twenty seats in a crusade for 'white civilization' and won five. Both Creswell and Boydell were defeated. The national council put up as many candidates, under the banner of ' Vote Labour to make South Africa a country for white men to live in', and won three seats. 85 The party never recovered from the blow or from the effects of the pact, which proved to be indeed no less disastrous than the communists had predicted in 1924.
Smuts speculated holistically in January 1929 about the prospects of federating all British states in southern Africa. This, retorted Hertzog in a 'Black Manifesto' of unadulterated racial venom, amounted to an appeal for a great 'kaffir state. He, on the other hand, promised to keep South Africa white by segregating Africans in the manner projected by his bills. For, he warned, unless they were removed from the common rolls, the Cape franchise would be ' the cause of the greatest tragedy in the history of South Africa'. 86 Smuts dodged the issue of the African franchise and lost the election. 87 The SAP polled 47 per cent of the votes cast and won 61 seats. The Nationalists polled 41 per cent and won 78 seats. This gave them a clear majority in the assembly, but Hertzog generously took Creswell and Sampson into the cabinet and consoled Boydell with a government senatorship.
The dividing line, said D. F. Malan, the Cape Nationalist leader, would be so drawn as to separate Africans from Coloured, who would receive much the same political rights as whites in all provinces. 88 These were false promises, said Abdurahman, and he reminded the Coloured that the government had talked of equality while sacrificing them in order to capture the poor white vote. 89 G. R. Olivier, the general secretary of the Afrikaner National Bond, urged the Coloured to vote for Hertzog, who intended to raise them above the African's level. They, who had been treated on a footing of equality with the 'blanket native' before 1925, were now being recognized as a 'definite national entity, and could look forward to becoming 'partners in the civilization and culture of the European'. 90
D. G. Wolton, the communist candidate, polled ninety-three votes and lost his deposit in the Cape Flats, a constituency with a large Coloured and African electorate. Bunting, who represented the party in Tembuland, fought a brave campaign against police intimidation, arrests, prosecutions and threats of violence by white racists; received 289 votes and saved his deposit. 91 He, his wife Rebecca, and his electoral agent Gana Makabeni were convicted under section 29 of the Native Administration Act on a charge of promoting inter-racial hostility. The Supreme Court ruled that the prosecution had failed to prove an intent to create feelings of hostility, and upheld their appeal. The police thereupon withdrew fourteen similar charges brought against one or other of the three during the election campaign.
The choice of constituencies was significant. White workers, having drifted into a state of semi-dependency upon a paternal government', had lost their militancy and could no longer be regarded as a potential revolutionary force. 92 The communists turned their faces to the African masses who, as the ICU had shown, were ripe for industrial and political organization. In an uncompromising rejection of the Hertzog-Smuts doctrine of white supremacy, the party's seventh annual conference in January 1929 demanded the 'complete equality of races', and adopted the boldest programme yet advanced by any party for the removal of discriminatory laws and practices. 93 Adhering to its basic principle, the conference urged workers and peasants of all races to combine in a militant revolutionary struggle for the overthrow of capitalism and imperialist rule.
The formula was not new; but the party broke fresh ground by attaching it to the aim of a workers' and peasants' republic 'wholly independent of the British or any other empire'. Africans should have the right of self-determination, meaning their complete liberation from imperialist as well as bourgeois and feudal or semi-feudal rule and oppression, whether British or South African'. Power would be vested in the working class and all the toiling masses, whether native or otherwise'. The programme, based on the theses adopted by the CI in 1920 for the colonies, marked a major change in the policy and strategy of the Communist party.
* In the unlikely event of any South African here called a racist objecting to the label, we offer this definition: A racist is one who asserts a causal biological relation between physical types, intelligence and behaviour; and who discriminates against persons because of their skin colour, nose shape or hair form.