I was very pleased to receive the invitation to make statement to the
Special Committee against Apartheid on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the
beginning of the Defiance Campaign against Unjust Laws of South Africa, sponsored by the
African National Congress. This Campaign was a very important development in the struggle
against apartheid and white domination in South Africa. But it had a great significance to
me personally in spite of the fact that I was removed from the scene of the struggle by
thousands of miles. It was through this Campaign that I became involved in support of the
liberation struggle in Africa, a development quite unexpected, which was to be a
dominating factor in my life for years to come. So, what I would like to do in this
statement is to make a personalised narrative of the effect of the Defiance Campaign in
South Africa seen from many miles away, as well as to indicate its effect on the lives of
some of us in the United States.
I first heard about plans for the Defiance Campaign when a long-time
friend of mine, Bill Sutherland, returned from a trip to London in early 1952 with the
news that a non-violent civil disobedience campaign against racist laws was to take place
in South Africa soon. As believers in non-violence and as staunch and active opponents of
racism, we felt we should do something to support the campaign. We contacted the ANC in
Johannesburg and I opened up a correspondence in early 1952 which grew steadily over the
next several months. The Joint Secretaries of the Campaign were Walter M. Sisulu, the
Secretary General of the African National Congress, and Yusuf A. Cachalia,
Secretary-General of the South African Indian Congress. I wrote to them on CORE letterhead
and Sisulu replied on 26 March: "Your letter of the 17th of March has been a source
of great inspiration to me. I am very delighted to learn that your organisation (CORE) has
taken such a great interest in the struggle for fundamental human rights by my
organization."
Up to this time I had very rudimentary knowledge about South Africa. My
organisational experience was in the United States working with the peace and civil rights
movements. I knew something about the brand of racist laws called apartheid, and about
Gandhi`s non-violent campaigns at the turn of the century. I, of course, had read Alan
Paton`s Cry the Beloved Country. So, I had to learn a great deal about South Africa
quite rapidly.
Through correspondence with Sisulu and Cachalia and by reading the
memoranda which began coming to me from the movement in South Africa, I saw the plan for
the Campaign develop. The first joint meeting to lay the foundation for the effort took
place on July 29, 1951, at the invitation of the ANC. At that time the organisations
involved committed themselves to "declare war" on apartheid laws such as the
pass laws, the Group Areas Act, the Separate Representation of Voters Act, the Suppression
of Communism Act, the Bantu Authorities Act. Cachalia wrote me that in January 1952 the
ANC had written to Prime Minister Malan demanding the repeal of certain apartheid laws,
failing which mass action against racist laws would begin. Malan responded with the threat
that "the government will make full use of the machinery at its disposal to quell any
disturbances". In the same communication the Prime Minister made the statement, often
quoted since, which reflects the essence of the white supremacist position: "It is
self-contradictory to claim as the inherent right of the Bantu, who differ in many ways
from Europeans, that they should be regarded as not different, especially when it is borne
in mind that these differences are permanent and not man-made."
The kickoff for the campaign was originally scheduled for April 6, 1952,
Van Riebeeck Day, the 300th anniversary of the coming of the white man to South Africa. It
also happened to be Palm Sunday. The European community planned large demonstrations and
celebrations for the occasion. It was a natural for black opposition demonstrations. But
the Joint Action Committee apparently did not feel quite ready for the inauguration of the
full effort. Sisulu wrote to me that "on the 6th of April we shall only have meetings
and demonstrations and a pledge shall be taken. Thereafter the Executive will fix the date
for the Defiance of Unjust Laws." Sisulu also said, "We need money for
propaganda, to assist some of the needy families, those people who are going to court and
imprisonment."
We in New York were deeply impressed by the plan to keep the campaign
nonviolent. Sisulu had written me in late March 1952 that he had just returned from a tour
of Natal, the Orange Free State, Zululand, and the Transvaal and was satisfied with the
response of the people. "We have made emphasis on a nonviolent approach; having
judged my people from the strike of 1950, they will certainly behave well."
In the meantime I had begun a correspondence with Professor Z.K. Matthews,
the President of the Cape Province branch of the ANC and the head of African Studies at
the only university-level school for Africans in South Africa, the University College of
Fort Hare. In the near future he was to come again to New York as a visiting professor at
Union Theological Seminary in New York where I became well acquainted with him. Referring
to the tactic of nonviolence in the campaign he said: "We take great comfort from the
fact that Gandhism was born on South African soil. Through these same means India was able
to achieve a tremendous upsurge of consciousness of destiny among the people of
India."
At about this time I began a correspondence also with Manilal Gandhi. He
was one of the sons of Mahatma Gandhi and he made his home at the Phoenix Settlement that
his father had started in Natal fifty years or so earlier. Manilal was still editing the
publication, Indian Opinion, also started by his father. I began the correspondence
with Gandhi in early 1952. He wrote me in March saying that he was a "bit doubtful to
what extent our struggle is going to remain nonviolent."
At the time he wrote this letter, Manilal Gandhi had already started a
21-day fast which he began on 7 March. But he advised us that we "should certainly
give our sympathy and moral support to the cause and watch how things go."
In New York we felt we had enough information about the campaign to make a
decision on what we ought to do. We decided to set up an ad hoc support group for
the campaign and adopted the name Americans for South African Resistance (AFSAR).
Our task, as we conceived it, was to be a vehicle for information about
the Campaign and to raise funds. The National Action Committee in South Africa was calling
for one million shillings by the end of March. We decided we would do what we could, but
over a longer period of time, for we had no funds and were just getting organised. Our
first public activity was a mass meeting planned for 6 April in solidarity with the ANC
and the SAIC of South Africa. While the white South Africans, particularly the Afrikaners,
had their solemn celebrations commemorating the coming of the Dutch in 1652, and the
blacks had their mass protest gatherings in major centers of South Africa, we launched our
own effort in New York. Through mailings and the mass distribution of throw-away leaflets
we called on people to join us on 6 April "to support the drive against Jim Crow in
South Africa." "Use Palm Sunday to help Africans get freedom", another
leaflet was headlined. "Show the world we oppose Jim Crow abroad as well as at
home". Not surprisingly, our language was in the American idiom.
About 800 people attended our meeting held at Abyssinian Baptist Church in
Harlem where Adam Clayton Powell was minister. Speakers were Powell, Canada Lee who had
starred in the movie version of "Cry, the Beloved Country", Vithal Babu,
Secretary of the Indian Congress Parliamentary Party in New Delhi, who was briefly in New
York, and Donald Harrington, minister of the Community Church. The resolution of support
for the South African Campaign, passed by acclamation at the meeting, was sent to the
Joint Action Committee in South Africa, Prime Minister Nehru in India, Manilal Gandhi,
President Truman and Secretary of State Dean Acheson. With our note to Walter Sisulu we
sent our first check of $300 collected at the meeting to support the campaign.
The meeting was followed by a motorcade of cars with protest banners
floating alongside from Harlem down to the South African Consulate at 65th and Madison.
The motorcade was impressive and covered many blocks. I had written to the South African
Consul-General asking for a discussion with him on behalf of Americans for South African
Resistance even though it was a Sunday afternoon. He responded diplomatically that such a
meeting would serve no useful purpose. He put us off by saying that if we wanted more
information, not he, but the South African Information Office was the place for us to go.
My correspondence with key leaders in the Defiance Campaign, plus our
April 6th demonstration in New York, helped to establish us as serious supporters of the
effort.
On 18 June, only a few days before the campaign of civil disobedience was
to begin, Sisulu wrote me asking specific help. He said that they were having increasing
difficulty in using normal channels for dissemination of news of the movement. He then
said: "In addressing this letter to you, we are considering whether we could not
enlist your valuable support in assisting us in publicising our statements, bulletins,
photographs and other propaganda material....You will realise in this way you will at the
same time save us a large amount of financial expenditure which is naturally difficult for
us to outlay".
We were honoured to be accepted in this collaborative manner and eagerly
took on the responsibility. I was informed by Cachalia that Professor Z.K. Matthews was
coming to New York with a letter of introduction to me and that he would be our best
source of information about the unfolding campaign.
The civil disobedience began on 26 June. A group of 52 were arrested at
the Boksburg "Native" Location, 20 miles from Johannesburg. Led by Nana Sita,
the president of the Transvaal Indian Congress, they had broken the law by trying to enter
the Location without a pass giving them permission. A second group were arrested in
Johannesburg at 11.30 p.m. for defying the curfew regulations. This was led by Flag
Boshielo of the ANC who said to the police: "We are nonviolent fighters for freedom.
We are going to defy regulations that have kept our fathers in bondage." I received
Bulletin 2 of the National Action Committee for the Defiance Campaign soon afterward and
it reported that volunteers in the campaign broke apartheid laws in six different centres
in the Union. The organised acts of defiance were preceded by great mass meetings. There
were mass prayer meetings in Port Elizabeth, Durban, Johannesburg (in the Orlando
Township) and in Cape Town.
Both Sisulu and Cachalia were arrested on 26 June. Nelson Mandela, who was
the Volunteer-in-Chief for the campaign and the president of the ANC Youth League, was
arrested the evening of 26 June. Other leaders of the ANC and SAIC were arrested within a
few days, including Dr. Dadoo, president of the Indian Congress, Moses Kotane of the
National Executive of the ANC, and J.B. Marks, president of the African Mineworkers`
Union.
The trial of the group arrested at Boksburg did not come up for nearly
four weeks and they were held in jail. They all pled guilty for not producing passes and
were given seven days in jail or one pound fine. The magistrate said he was taking into
account the time they already spent behind bars in sentencing them. Only one paid the
fine. At the time of the trial the court and the yard outside were filled with African and
Indian spectators and demonstrators, most of them wearing the black, yellow and green
armbands of the ANC and giving the thumbs-up Congress salute. As the trial ended the crowd
left singing "Mayibuye Afrika" (God Bless Africa).
Dadoo, Kotane, and Marks were given four to six months in jail under the
Suppression of Communism Act. In their case the magistrate said: "It is common
knowledge that one of the aims of communism is to break down race barriers and strive for
equal rights for all sections of the people and to do so without any discrimination of
race, colour or creed... The Union of South Africa, with its peculiar problems created by
a population overwhelmingly non-European, is fertile ground for the dissemination of
communist propaganda. This would endanger the survival of Europeans. Therefore legislation
must be pursued with the object of suppressing communism." It was this kind of
mentality that made us discount the charge of communist influence in the movement.
Opposition to apartheid and the support of communism were made synonymous. By this
definition we were all communists.
Our sources of information about the Campaign were several - the bulletins
arriving from South Africa, continued correspondence, some press reports in American
papers such as the New York Times, but most important was Prof. Z. K. Matthews. He
arrived in New York in late June 1952 to take up his position as the Henry Luce Visiting
Professor of World Christianity at Union Theological Seminary, a post which was to
continue for one year. I made contact very soon with Matthews and we saw each other
frequently. He shared the stream of information coming to him from South Africa, most
important of which were communications from his son Joe. Joe was a young lawyer with an
office in Port Elizabeth, one of the most active centres of the Campaign. He was also one
of the leaders of both the Youth League and the ANC. So the information we received was
from the inside. With this kind of data we began to issue bulletins at least once a month
about the progress of the Campaign. The information coming from Matthews was treated
anonymously. We put out 18 or 20 AFSAR Bulletins in the 1952-53 year, and our mailing list
grew modestly but steadily.
One of the letters from Joe Matthews to his father in early September
reported that in Grahamstown in the Cape Province the people forced the City Council to
close down the beer hall in the African location. He wrote: "For days the people
stood in front of the beer hall praying and singing the African National Anthem until the
place was shut up. It was built at a cost of £8,000 and brought the Municipal Council a
revenue of £240 a week. That is one of the good by-products of the campaign: it has dealt
a death blow to hooliganism and drunkenness...."
This same communication reported that the biggest demonstration of the
Campaign took place on 26 August in Johannesburg against the arrest of ANC leaders. The
courts were jammed with 2,000 people inside the building and thousands more gathered in
the open square outside at a rally which lasted until dark." An unprecedented event
took place when the court adjourned for fifteen minutes to allow Dr. Moroka (President of
ANC and himself on trial), at the request of the prosecutor, to address the people. Amid
shouts of "Afrika", Dr Moroka stood on a chair and asked the people to
leave the building quietly so that the case could continue. They left immediately in
perfect silence.
Subsequently Dr. Moroka and 19 others were found guilty under the
Suppression of Communism Act and were sentenced to 9 months in prison at compulsory
labour, suspended for 2 years.
I received a letter from Sisulu written on 16 September urging us to do
what we could to send funds. "We need plenty of funds as you can see" he wrote.
"Our budget is becoming bigger every month". We were greatly limited in what we
could do. We were certainly not professional fund raisers. I suppose our mailing list was
something less than 1000. There was a growing edge to American interest in South Africa
and in the Campaign, but among a pretty select group. Nevertheless some established
groups, such as local and national church bodies, put the issue on their agendas. In
Boston a local group calling itself Bostonions Allied for South African Resistance
(BAFSAR) voluntarily affiliated with us. They sponsored public meetings, carried and
promoted literature, mostly supplied by our New York office, and raised some funds. At one
time in early 1953 we received about $700 for the campaign through the efforts of this
group.
We probably did not send as much as $5,000 to South Africa for the
duration of the Campaign. Much of it was sent through Z. K. Matthews. But there was a
sense of excitement about the support we received. Contributions came from all parts of
the US, including Hawaii, from Canada and India. A woman in Arizona sent us her diamond
ring saying she could not conscientiously wear it knowing that it represented slave
labour. We sold it and sent the proceeds to South Africa. A family in Ohio contributed
$100 at Christmastime and said it represented funds they had saved for family gifts. A
group at a theological seminary sent funds saved by eating sacrificial meals, and a person
who refused to pay federal tax for military purposes sent $100 saved in this way. Thus we
began to get some following around the country.
In 1952 the General Assembly of the United Nations began its session in
October. Spurred by the Defiance Campaign, India took the lead in calling for an agenda
item which for the first time would deal with the whole racial conflict in South Africa.
Up to that time the only items related to South Africa dealt with the treatment of people
of Indian and Pakistani origin and the question of Namibia, then called South West Africa.
A cross-section of Asian countries supported India`s lead. The item was assigned to the Ad
Hoc Political Committee whose chairman was Ambassador Alexis Kyrou of Greece. Asian
and African delegates were interested in having Z.K. Matthews give expert testimony to the
Committee relevant to its consideration of the issue. No one could have spoken with
greater authority. Today, hearing expert testimony before the appropriate committee of the
U.N. is accepted procedure, but in 1952, when the U.N. was looked upon as something of a
Western club, it was not. AFSAR helped organise a letter-writing campaign to the U.N. and
the U.S. Mission to the U.N. seeking approval for Matthews` appearance. Among the
distinguished Americans who wrote on behalf of Matthews was Harry Emerson Fosdick,
minister of the prestigious Riverside Church in New York, who wrote to Ambassador Kyrou
and Henry Cabot Lodge at the U.S. Mission to the U.N. A reply came from Charles E. Allen,
Director of the Office of Public Affairs at the U.S. Mission, explaining diplomatically
that to allow petitioners to appear before the U.N. "would involve radical changes in
the structures and procedures of the U.N." The function of the U.N., Fosdick was
told, was to reconcile judgements and policies of governments, not to function as
fact-finding agencies. The U.S. made clear it would vote against Matthews` appearance.
I recall a visit to Matthews` apartment in McGiffert Hall of Union
Seminary at about this time. As I entered the apartment, two gentlemen were just leaving.
After they departed, Z. K. Matthews said, "Do you know who those men are?" I
didn`t, so he explained, "They were from the U.S. State Department and came here to
urge me not to insist on speaking at the U.N. If I did the U.S. would have to vote against
me." The U.N., dominated at that time by the U.S., did not approve Matthews` request.
A crisis arose for the Defiance Campaign in October and November of 1952
when riots broke out, centred in the Eastern Cape Province, especially in Port Elizabeth
and East London. We had word from a number of sources, including Manilal Gandhi and
Quintin Whyte, the Director of the South African Institute of Race Relations, that the
riots were quite separate from the Campaign although the government tried to associate
them.
The information which came through Z.K. Matthews was that in East London
Africans had been given permission to hold an open air religious service in the African
location. The preacher was reading about the oppression of the Israelites from the Bible
to about 200 people. Two vehicles loaded with armed police drove up. The policeman in
charge ordered the crowd to disperse within five minutes. The meeting immediately broke
up, but in less than two minutes the police ordered a baton charge. Before the crowd could
get out of the square, shots were fired and a man was killed. The police then drove in
their vehicles through the streets of the Location, firing at random. One man was killed
while sitting in his kitchen reading a newspaper. The rioting started after this, first
with stone throwing and later with setting fire to buildings. Altogether 13 people were
killed and at least 50 injured.
The net result from the riots was that the government cracked down on all
organised protests. Quintin Whyte wrote, "While we must distinguish between the
Campaign and the riots, nevertheless the state of tension is very high. There has been a
marked hardening against liberals in the country."
Whyte`s letter to me of November 14, 1952, was an important assessment of
the Campaign. He said the Campaign "is training heroes and martyrs as well as leaders
for future work." He spoke of the "remarkable self-control of the
resisters." In a summary sentence he said the effect of the campaign is "to
unite non-Europeans to give expression to African nationalism; to train for the future; to
demonstrate the power of Africans; to make Europeans question themselves; to make the
government more adamant; to make liberal Europeans more unpopular; and in the long run to
gain concessions."
The discipline of the volunteers in the Campaign began to win new
adherents and to gain the sympathy of some who had been sceptical about the degree to
which nonviolence would be followed.
On 8 December, international publicity was given to the arrest of Patrick
Duncan and Manilal Gandhi as part of a group that violated the law by going into the
Germiston Location near Johannesburg without passes. Duncan was the first white man to be
arrested. He attracted special attention because he was the son of a former Governor
General of South Africa. Further, he was on crutches at the time of his arrest as a result
of a motor accident.
Duncan was sentenced to 100 days in jail or $280 fine. Gandhi was given a
50 day sentence or $140 fine. Both chose to serve the sentences.
Up to December 16, 1952, the total number arrested in the Campaign was
8,057, of which 5,719 were in the Eastern Cape, 423 in Western Cape, 1,411 in Transvaal,
246 in Natal and 258 in the Orange Free State.
The government was bound to respond to the growing impact of the Campaign
with severe measures, and it did so toward the end of 1952. It passed the Public Safety
Act and the Criminal Laws amendment Act. Dr. R. T. Bokwe, the brother-in-law of Z.K.
Matthews, wrote to me on 30 December saying that no meetings of more than ten people were
allowed in African locations or reserves. Practically all African leaders, including
himself, had been served letters from the Minister of Justice forbidding them from
attending gatherings. He told me that he could not even attend a church service.
A so-called "Whipping Post Law" was passed under which anyone
who received funds for any organised resistance to laws of the Union was punishable by
five years imprisonment, £500 fine, and 15 lashes with the cane.
With these developments we in New York were hesitant to send more funds. I
wrote to Dr. Bokwe, who had been recipient of a good portion of the several thousand
dollars we sent to South Africa: "We have not wanted to send any further money until
we knew whether you or any others might be placed in jeopardy. Do you have any advice for
us in this regard?" Previous letters from Bokwe had informed us that our donations
had, in some cases, paid fines for resisters who had become ill in jail, and had helped
families whose breadwinners were out of circulation for a period of time. The fact is that
after the government passed this new legislation, the Defiance Campaign came to a halt and
the work of AFSAR had to change. We wrote to our supporters in our bulletin of April 14,
1953, that we had not sent any funds recently "because we are awaiting clarification
of the `Whipping Post Law.`" Bokwe wrote me on March 22, 1953, saying he had received
our contribution of 13 February and then added: "We have good reason to believe that
mail is subjected to scrutiny. One is thus unable to write you as freely as one should
have liked to".
By this time I had developed a keen interest in South Africa and felt
involved. I was more than casually interested in the election of Chief Albert J. Luthuli
to the presidency of the ANC at their December 1952 Congress, replacing Dr. Moroka. I
opened up a correspondence with Luthuli. I found out that until November 11, 1952, he had
been Chief of the Groutville Mission Reserve for seventeen years, having been elected to
the post by the people. He was told by the South African Government that he would have to
choose between his chieftancy and his work with the ANC. He unhesitatingly chose the ANC.
The government deposed him.
Activities of AFSAR apparently attracted some attention in South African
government circles. Arthur Blaxall sent me a clipping from a newspaper in South Africa in
which Eric Louw, then Minister of Economic Affairs, later Foreign Minister, called
attention to support which AFSAR was giving to the Campaign and to the relief of those
arrested.
On April 15, 1953, elections (for whites) were held in South Africa, the
first since the Nationalists came to power in 1948. They strengthened their hold on the
government by increasing their majority in parliament. Apartheid was extended also. The
Population Registration Act was passed, requiring all people in South Africa to register
with the government by race. Plans were laid for eliminating Sophiatown, an area of the
city where Africans could own land, and creating the area now called Soweto.
The Defiance Campaign came to an end. We in AFSAR had a series of meetings
to decide whether we should disband, set up a more permanent organisation dealing with
South Africa or establish something even broader. We decided on the third course. Thus
AFSAR was transformed into an organisation which would relate to the whole anti-colonial
struggle in Africa. The name chosen for this new entity was the American Committee on
Africa. [Transcribed from tape.