4 - Future of the Africanist Movement: Questions and Answers by Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe, The Africanist, January 1959

Summary

Q. Who are the Africanists?

A. A simple answer would be that they are the members of the Africanist Movement. But, if one wishes to go deeper into the question, one would say that they are those Africans who believe that African Nationalism is the only liberatory outlook that can bind together the African masses by providing them with a loyalty higher than that of the tribe and thus mould them into a militant disciplined fighting force.

Q. How long has your movement been in existence?

A. The germ of the Movement was there even before the advent of the European. When Moshoeshoe brought together the scattered remnants of various African tribes and moulded them into a patriotic Sotho tribe, he was engaged in nation-building. Similarly Chaka's wars whereby he sought to establish a single authority in place of the many tribal authorities of Natal, were, we say, steps in the direction of nation-building. In the Cape the House of Gcaleka was recognised as the Paramount authority. There is no doubt that the pressure of social and economic conditions would in time have given rise to the Union of these territories.

As a political organisation, however, we trace our origin to 1912 – the year the A.N.C. was born – with 1944 the year our Movement was given that purposiveness which helps to give clear direction and power to a mass struggle. It is in that year that Lembede and those in his immediate circle demanded from the A.N.C.:

• 1. A clear outlook: African Nationalism and Africanism.

• 2. A basic policy outlining our fundamental postulates with respect to our social intentions, especially in the ultimate future.

• 3. A Programme.

The first two demands, Lembede himself met, while the third was met in 1949 when the Africanists (known as the Congress Youth League) provided the A.N.C. with the popular Nation-Building Programme of 1949.

Q. What are your differences with the A.N.C.?

A. First of all we differ radically in our conception of the struggle. We firmly hold that we are oppressed as a subject nation – the African nation. To us, therefore, the struggle is a national struggle. Those of the A.N.C. who are its active policy-makers, maintain, in the face of all the hard facts of the S.A. situation, that ours is a class struggle.